


Flirting with Insanity

by AnonymousMink



Series: Madness Becomes Her [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Bad Romance, Crazy In Love, Dark fic, F/M, Genuine Nice Guy Bruce Wayne, Jerome Lives, Jerome is the joker, Murder, Oh and bad language!, Or at least the Joker might have once been Jerome, Sequel, Trigger Warnings for (but not limited to):, Updating tags for:, Violence, and so much more! - Freeform, slowish burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 22:28:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 40,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13890459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousMink/pseuds/AnonymousMink
Summary: --“The places at all of your preferred facilities were already filled by the time we noticed the error,” Dr Irving said, ripping off band aid after band aid until Harley felt bloody with it, “you’ll be placed at another location I’m afraid.”“Where?”Please not there, she thought desperately as the pause dragged and the dream resurfaced again. The laughter ringing through her skull, Please if there’s a God don’t let it be-“Arkham Asylum.”Well fuck.--Eight years after escaping Gotham city, Harley finds herself right back where she started. A resident at Arkham Asylum she promises herself she can handle just about anything... anything except him. But hey, what are the chances that they'd give a newbie like her control over the most infamous patient in the asylum? Fingers crossed she'll never have to see him again, the man she knew as Jerome. The nightmare they call The Joker.(Sequel to 'The Imperfect Art of Madness, a future AU written during the S4 hiatus so completely uncanon-y after that point! Gotham elements grown into a more familiar DC universe. Yet another Harley origin story full of murder, mayhem and the contagious properties of madness. Joker/Harley.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Annnnd we're back! Thanks to the incredible support on the last chapter of 'The Imperfect Art of Madness' I knew the sequel just had to be written! :-P It takes place roughly 8 or 9 years after the first fic with a newly minted Doctor Harleen 'Harley' Quinzel and The Joker, aka the Murderer Formerly Known as Jerome!  
> I really hope you all like it, I have a couple of chapters and a rough outline for the rest of the fic but I haven't written quite as far ahead as I usually do so I'm not sure if it'll have as speedy updates as the first one :-P
> 
> And as always, if you do enjoy it I really hope you consider leaving a comment down below - I can't tell you what it means to me, it's what keeps me writing!

 

**Prologue**

 

Hands traced along her spine, calloused and fever hot against her skin. Her every nerve on fire as his ragged breath pooled against her neck.

“There you are” he murmured from far too close, familiar and inescapable “you didn’t forget about me did you?”

She couldn’t move.

Her voice caught in her throat, airway squeezed too tight to breathe as his fingers walked up the notches in her spine, across her shoulder, coming to rest against her collar bone.

Something cold at her jugular. Sharp metal.

“You didn’t, right? Forget about me?” the voice was a languid drawl, insinuating and mocking in turn, “Come on kiddo, not after all the  _ fun  _ we had!” 

The knife, she knew it was a knife now, sliced into her. Carving words across her skin, smiley faces as she struggled to speak, desperation clawed inside of her as she fought in vein to cry out for help. 

The blood began to pool.

It dripped down and down, running in rivulets along the insides of her arms. Her muscles unfreezing just enough that she could drag her hands up to the faint flickering light.

They were red.

“That’s not my doing you know,” he commented, lips scraping against the shell of her ear as he cut and cut. “It’s all you Harley Girl. Allllll you.”

He pressed a kiss against her neck, feather light and scalding and then he was laughing. Howling.

She woke up gasping, sweat drenched and scared as she scrambled from her bed. Pressing her hands tightly against her neck and scratching at her skin, as if she could claw away the memory of his touch.

She hadn’t had a nightmare in  _ months,  _ disorientated in the blinding sunlight as she tried to marshall her breath. Steadying herself against the wall as she inhaled and exhaled in counts of three.

_ Breathe Harley,  _ she snapped at herself as the real world started to creep back in. It was a bad dream. Nothing more. A remnant of a long buried trauma and it couldn’t touch her now.

Not if she didn’t let it.

Shuddering she forced herself to calm down enough to glance at her bedside table and the bright glow of the LED clock there.  _ Perfect _ . She’d overslept again.

Three weeks out of full time education and she was already losing her grip on time. Shaking off the last dregs of the nightmare Harley stumbled into the living room, her roommate had left already leaving the post stacked up on the table of their cramped apartment. The sounds of New York blared through the open window, cabs and cars and shouting.

_ Home _ .

She sighed, flicking through the stack of envelope for want of anything else to do before her own name caught her eye. A pristine white letter addressed to ‘ _ Dr Harleen Quinzel.’ _

She grinned despite herself, pride warming her at last as she hefted it in her hands. She didn’t think she’d ever get tired of seeing her name like that, even if the ink  _ was _ still fresh on her doctorate. Turning the envelope in her hand, she almost dropped it when she saw the stamp on the back.

Oh God.  _ This was it. _

This was the big time.

The one letter that would decide the rest of her life, well, the next few years of it anyway. Sweat beaded at the back of her neck, breath catching as she unfolded the thick sheet of paper inside. 

“ _ Dr Quinzel,”  _ She read aloud, “ _ We’re pleased to inform you that your residency request has been accepted by the Westchester Asylum for the month starting-” _

She trailed off, barely able to believe her own ears. Her own eyes.

Westchester Asylum.

_ Her first choice. _

God, who actually got their first choice? She’d been the top of her class sure but places there… they were impossible to get. The standards so high they only took three interns a year.

_ Her. _

They’d chosen her!

“YES!” She shouted to her empty apartment, fist pumping in glee as she devoured the words again. Reading it three times over just to make sure. “YESSSSS!”

While her classmates would be shipped to low level facilities, overcrowded hospitals and family clinics she’d be spending her residency at the prestigious Westchester Asylum. Even reading the name made her feel fancy, visions of the sprawling, top of the line estate just outside of DC dancing behind her eyes. It was the Ritz of facilities for the criminally insane.

The newest techniques, the best rehabilitation rates, it was God tier.

Of course, there was a downside. It didn’t have quite as many A-list crazies as some of those…  _ other  _ cities, but it still had some serious contenders. The Metropolis Strangler, the Tri-State Arsonist, hell the guy who’d just tried to assassinate the president had been taken there. She’d be able to get up close and personal with all of them.

She could finally make a difference.

Happy tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, unable to keep from dancing with excitement as she reached for her phone. She had to tell  _ everyone.  _ It started ringing before she’d even laid a finger on it, dashing at her face with the back of her hands she grinned when she saw the number.

“Doctor Irving,” she beamed, twirling the cord around her finger, “I was just about to call you! I got the letter today, I can’t believ-”

“That’s what I’m calling about Harleen,” her mentor’s voice crackled down the line, the uncertainty in his usually stalwart demeanor deflating her just a little, “I’ve just gotten off the phone with admin, there was an error. I’m very sorry but there isn’t a place for you at Westchester this year.”

Her stomach plummeted, coldness prickling along her spine even as she fought her disappointment back.

“Oh- Oh I thought…” she swallowed hard, forcing herself to pick her chin up and laugh, “I thought it was too good to be true. Did I get my second choice instead then? I mean Stryker isn’t Westchester but it’s still-”

“I’m afraid not.”

Her stomach doubled down, squeezing sickly as her hope sputtered out like a match in a rainstorm. It was okay though, it had to be okay. Her third choice might not have been great but it was closer than the other two at least, if she got the Raingate Facility she could keep her apartment in the city at least.

“The places at all of your preferred facilities were already filled by the time we noticed the error,” Dr Irving said, ripping off band aid after band aid until Harley felt bloody with it, “you’ll be placed at another location I’m afraid.”

“Where?”

_ Please not there,  _ Harley thought desperately as the pause dragged and the dream resurfaced again. The laughter ringing through her skull,  _ Please if there’s a God don’t let it be- _

“Arkham Asylum.”

Well fuck.


	2. Shake it Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley waits for the universe to cut her a break.  
> She might be waiting a long time...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're in the game! Thank you so so much to everyone who commented on the last chapter, you are truly the best of people and you keep me writing! :D I hope y'all enjoy this first real chapter and I promise that whilst a lil absent atm, the man of the hour will turn up very very soon! <3
> 
> Disclaimer: Everything I know about psychology and psychiatric residencies has been learned through comic books, lazy google searches and Criminal Minds reruns, as such I have just made up a whoooole bunch of stuff in this fic so please suspend disbelief if you're a profesh! ;-)

 

 

 

 

She’d been doing so well.

So so well.

Eight years and she’d almost stopped thinking about _the_ _incident_ entirely. She had a life now, a promising career in a city she loved, a _future,_ and it was all draining away in front of her eyes because a faceless stranger in an office somewhere couldn’t do their fucking job.

If she ever got her hands on that admin assistant…

_ No.  _ She snapped at herself silently, squeezing her hands into fists as the cab rolled through a painfully familiar jungle of grey brick and graffiti,  _ we don’t think like that anymore. _

Years of reflection and a shit ton of repressing and she’d finally gotten herself back on track. She’d finally accepted that what she’d been through was a deeply traumatic experience that her teenage mind had disassociated from to protect her. None of it was her fault. 

That person… it wasn’t who  _ she _ was.

“Here ya are sweetheart,” the driver mumbled around his cigar, pulling the cab to a halt in front of a crumbling apartment building. It was just barely on the right side of the wrong half of town, the proximity to the Narrows was the only reason she could afford it on Arkham’s pittance of a wage, “Need any help with ya bags?”

“It’s alright,” she faked a smile, rubbing her fingers compulsively over the back of her hand. Her skin was perfectly smooth, no trace of the scars there remained. She’d spent a fortune on miracle creams to ensure it. “I can handle them.”

“If ya sure,” he shrugged as she hauled her two meagre suitcases from the seat next to her and straightened up. She’d always preferred to travel light, a hangover from her childhood maybe. A different apartment every month, a new landlord to avoid.

It made it easier now at least. Small mercies.

“Thanks for the ride,” she shrugged the tension from her shoulders, passing a couple of crumpled bills through his window and trying not to gag on the cloud of smoke.

“No trouble,” he said with the hint of a leer, “you be careful now kid, Gotham’s one crazy town.”

She waited until the car was moving again before she turned to the building, smile dropping like a stone.

He had  _ no _ idea.

It might look the same as she remembered but she was under no illusions about the state of life in Gotham City. Crime had skyrocketed at about the same time that the criminals had all decided to get a schtick. Fancy costumes and carefully themed mayhem taking over from the world of mob law.  Not to mention the fact that the police were so ineffective there was now a fully grown man dressed as a bat going around trying to keep the peace.

Gotham was crazy alright, and it was her job to fix it.

Her hands shook around the keys as a familiar laugh breezed through her, so close she could almost feel the warmth of his breath against her skin as he howled. Shoving the sound down she forced her way inside.

It wasn’t real. A remnant, a bad dream.

A scar she couldn’t quite cover.

Anyway, she reminded herself as she hauled her bags into the grey world of her new apartment, it wasn’t like she’d ever actually have to see  _ him  _ again.

Gotham was a big place after all, and Arkham had more crazies than she could count. If the fates were kind they’d never cross paths again.

 

\---

 

Arkham Asylum was bigger than it had looked in the welcome packet they’d sent her. A looming complex of overly ornate buildings, spires stretching towards the sky as dozens of tiny barred windows smiled at her like broken teeth.

She hid her shudder as the guard waved her through on her temporary ID, parking up at reception and taking a second to centre herself.

There was absolutely no need to be intimidated, she was the  _ doctor  _ in this situation. This would be her house. Her chance to help rehabilitate Gotham’s forgotten sons and daughters, those who’d turned to the darkness when they had nowhere else to go.

She had this, right?

_ Right _ .

Gathering up her purse she stepped briskly into the afternoon air, sensible heels clacking against the stone floor as she entered the hushed hallways of the Asylum.

“Doctor Quinzel?” An older woman with a steel gray pageboy haircut and a sensible pant suit was waiting for her, official looking clipboard held to her chest as the door swung shut behind her. How keen of them.

“Call me Harley, please,” she forced a bright smile, sticking out her hand. Confidence was key.

“Harley,” the woman took it, palm ever so slightly clammy against Harley’s as they shook firmly, “I’m Doctor Elizabeth Eddows, Head of Psychiatry here at Arkham.”

That made her blink. She’d been expecting to have to introduce herself to an admin assistant, maybe get a tour from an overworked nurse. But here was the Head of Psychiatry ready and waiting for her to arrive.

Harley swallowed, making sure her smile was extra bright and welcoming as she subtly adjusted her blazer. It never hurt to make a good first impression.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Doctor Eddows, you have a wonderful facility here.”

Lies, but it was the appropriate thing to say. She’d repeated it to herself more times than she could count, over and over until she almost believed it herself.

Arkham Asylum had its issues but it was still a world known, if not  _ renowned _ , facility for the criminally insane. If she made a name for herself here then Westchester would have no choice but to take her in a few years, if she was lucky and a place opened up she might even be able to transfer early, in a few months even.

She just had to get through this first.

“Ah- yes,” there was something off about Elizabeth Eddows, Harley could see it now she was close enough. Her warm smile offset by worried creases beside her eyes. The older woman’s gaze darting around a little too fast to be perfectly at ease. “Is this your first time here in Gotham?”

Harley’s smile turned rictus, “No, no I actually lived here for a couple of years as a kid. I moved back to New York for college.”

Was that what this was about?

She assumed they knew all about _the_ _incident_ ,  she’d buried her previous time in Gotham in her own life but it was still presumably in the public records somewhere. Even if she’d never told anyone the full extent of what had happened there, what _she’d_ done. The last thing she’d wanted was to be put in a cell of her own after all.

Still, maybe they considered it a conflict of interest anyway?

Her jaw clenched, ready to fight for her place if she had to. To insist that her previous misfortunes shouldn’t be held against her, it was years ago and she had fully moved on from it. Frankly it was unprofessional of them to even bring it up-

“That’s nice,” Elizabeth was already moving away, gesturing for Harley to follow as she scanned them through a checkpoint, “this is a staff only section, to the left is the gate to blocks A to F, the common rooms, patient canteen and infirmary, blocks G and H are in the south building. We’ll go right here though, up to the offices on the first floor.”

Oh. Maybe they didn’t care after all. Arkham wasn’t exactly known for its security, how deep into her background had they even looked?

Had they bothered to look at all?

Harley bit her tongue, staying silent as they traipsed up a set of cold stone stairs. The Asylum had a still, hushed quality to it that gave her goosebumps. The light that streamed in was tinted almost murky green, like the whole building had been forgotten at the bottom of a lake somewhere. 

She shuddered.

“Ah - here,” Elizabeth stopped so suddenly Harley almost ran into her, catching herself at the last moment and smiling as if nothing was amiss when Elizabeth turned to look at her. They’d drawn to a halt in front of a battered door with a missing nameplate. The deep scratches in the wood around it made Harley think the name had been replaced a lot more than once over the years. “This is your office.”

“My… office?” She couldn’t hide her shock, gaze travelling over the surprisingly spacious room, “I was expecting to be put in a broom closet with the other interns.”

“Ah well, Doctor Morgan left recently for… personal reasons,” Elizabeth fiddled with the light switch, the orange bulb buzzing on above them as she avoided eye contact; “And you are our only intern this year. We… we have quite a high turnover.”

That sounded ominous.

“Oh, well I’m glad to be here anyway. I’m looking forward to helping out in any way I can, any task, however small, consider me on it.”

She ran a hand over her scarred wooden desk, if she hadn’t been expecting an office she certainly wasn’t expecting any real work. Not yet at least.  She’d be at the bottom of the pecking order, research reports, second opinions, the occasional joint session. She’d have to  _ earn  _ her cases the hard way, pay her dues.

Elizabeth’s eye twitched. 

Harley’s stomach sank further.

“We pride ourselves on direct experience here, Harley,” Elizabeth cleared her throat, adjusting her collar carefully, “and since we’re a little understaffed we thought it might be best to let you dive straight into one of our higher level cases. Get some practical experience under your belt.”

Warning bells started ringing in the back of Harley’s mind but she ignored them, fighting to keep her expression neutral. This was a good thing, she told herself firmly, the fact they trusted her with high level patients so soon out of the gate was a promising sign for her future. That she could become a valued member of the team.

“Higher level case?” She repeated brightly even as a cold shiver raced down her spine. Like someone had just walked over her grave.

“I’ll be perfectly honest with you Harley,”  _ doubtful  _ Harley added to her self but kept her mouth shut, “we have a particularly… challenging patient at the moment. Conventional approaches have been of limited use so far, the board thought perhaps a younger psychiatrist might be able to get better results, someone going in blind so to speak. A fresh perspective.”

Elizabeth looked uncertain, like she knew she feeding Harley to the wolves and hoping something would happen to stop it. The moment lingered and nothing happened, no flash of lightning or celestial intervention.

Dejected, Elizabeth hurried on, dark eyes creased with sympathy,  “You can turn the case down though, we would completely understand if you’re not ready for such a big responsibility so early in your residency. In fact I can take it up with the board tomorrow-"

“No, no it’s fine.” The words were sharper than she intended. A knee-jerk reaction to the perceived slight. “I’m sure I can handle it.”

Elizabeth looked even more pained and Harley felt a rush of guilt.

It wasn’t her fault, she was sure the older woman hadn’t meant it as an insult but Harley heard it as one anyway. Another in a long line of people who underestimated her, who took one look at her baby face and blonde hair and decided she couldn’t possibly handle the pressure. That she would be best finding another career, or moving into a more  _ sedate  _ area of psychology. A school counselor maybe.

It made her so angry she felt sick.

It was the reason she started wearing the thick rimmed glasses she didn’t need and tying her hair back in a harsh knot at the base of her skull. Anything to be taken seriously. Anything to be given a chance.

And this… this was a _chance._ A one on one with a challenging patient in Gotham City? A renowned villain most likely?

She’d been an idiot to pass it up.

Pushing her glasses up her nose she fixed Elizabeth with her brightest smile, “Well, I’m up for the challenge at least! Which patient is it?”

She could do this. She could prove herself worthy, stake her claim, make a difference.

She could thrive, just as long as her new patient was anyone but  _ him _ . Anyone at all. 

“Patient 4479,” Eddows swallowed hard, too much white showing around her eyes, “Jerome Valeska, aka The Joker.”  
  



	3. I Knew You Were Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Decisions Decisions...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again fellow maniacs - we're back with a new chapter and the guy I knoooow you've all been waiting for! I really hope you enjoy it kiddos, I'd love to hear from you if you do!  
> Also this is your annual reminder I have a tumblr (anonymousmink.tumblr.com) where I occasionally post story art and yaknow... absolute nonsense, so hit me up there if you're on the blue hellsite yourself! :D

  
  
  


She could leave. 

Now.

Before anything happened.

Swallowing back bile Harley slumped in the chair,  _ her _ chair, her office...  _ hers.  _ They’d given her a whole room all to herself with bookshelves waiting to be filled and plenty of space for her fancy framed degrees.

They’d given her an opportunity to make a name for herself right out of the gate.

But the price…

Harley looked over Elizabeth's parting gifts, the handful of security passes, paperwork, and one paper thin file. So slight it barely seemed there at all.

It was plain manila, just the patient name and case number scribbled in the top corner marking it for what it was. Jeez, no wonder Elizabeth had looked so uncomfortable, she’d agreed to use Harley as fresh meat before she even met her.

Chum in the water.

She bit her teeth together hard enough to hurt, the muscles in her jaw straining as anger burnt through her. She’d been so good damn it, despite her teenage dreams she’d never written that book, never sold the rights to her life like she’d once promised herself. No agents, no TV shows, no Lifetime movies. She’d  _ buried  _ it instead, shutting away that month of chaos until it was like it had never happened. Scrubbing every trace of him clean, the yes and no scars on her hands, the brightly coloured hair.

She’d moved on and it had caught up with her anyway, a shadow she couldn’t escape threatening to swallow her whole. Her only hope of escaping it was leaving now before it started again. To do the sensible thing and get the hell out of dodge while she still could.

She’d already grabbed her purse, fingers clenched white around the strap as she rose. Ready to find Elizabeth then and there and reject the case, resign her job, whatever it took to get out of there whole.

But leaving… leaving would mean  _ giving up.  _

She slumped back into her chair, temples throbbing as she considered it, as she picked up the file that had ruined it all. It was such a little thing, barely a few pages thick from the look of it. One strong breeze and it would be gone.

Walking away from it would mean throwing away eight years of back breaking work. The years of sleepless nights, overlong shifts, juggling her jobs and studies and the gymnastics scholarship that had gotten her into university in the first place.

All that time and work and effort would be for nothing _. _

She’d be  _ nothing _ .

The folder crumpled in her hands, fingers clenching tight around it. Scowling she flattened it out again, flipping open the cover before she could think better of it. Teeth gritted tight as she flicked through the meagre information they’d provided for her, the little they’d allow since they wanted her to go in  _ blind.  _

She met the eyes of the black and white photo inside without flinching. Staring right into the burning embers of a face she remembered far better than she wanted too and holding her ground.

She was a  _ professional _ now, a certified psychiatrist. Besides, it wasn’t like he was even going to  _ remember _ her anyway. He was the clown prince of crime now, the master of mayhem, the biggest news in Gotham in a century and she… she’d been a blip on his radar. One month almost a decade ago versus however much chaos he’d caused in the meantime.

She was old news.

And she  _ definitely _ didn’t feel disappointed about it. No, she’d gotten a real life, a real job, she  _ wanted  _ him to forget her, to forget who she’d been. She wasn’t that girl anymore, she was the new and improved Harley and she’d be damned if she let him ruin her life again.    
  


—-

 

Arkham was absolutely  _ ridiculous. _

You bite  _ one  _ nose off and suddenly you’re a danger to everyone!

J paced the edge of his cell, his plan to do some networking during his leisurely vacation at the Arkham Establishment for Recreation and Insanity shot firmly on the foot by his sudden isolation. Oh no, he was  _ far  _ too naughty to be allowed to play shuffleboard with the rest of the guests or get his kumbaya on in group now.

It was a one way upgrade to the isolation ward for him and it was  _ boring. _

No entertainment, no conversation, no  _ audience,  _ just stone walls and steady guard changes that tried their best to ignore him. The silence was giving him a headache, especially now he didn’t even have his therapy sessions to break up the days.

He scowled at the stone work, fingers clenching and unclenching as he tracked the murky path of sunlight across the floor. The window tiny, located twice his height and barred to the  _ teeth. _

This was his own fault, he knew it, he shouldn’t have broken that last shrink. Well  _ yeah _ , he should of, that’s what he  _ did  _ but still, the game was over too fast. 

He should have taken his time,  _ enjoyed  _ the process. Instead he’d shot his load early and ruined the party.

Now he was bored.

Bored bored  _ bored. _

The isolation was giving him  _ weird  _ dreams. Okay all of his dreams were weird, it was his head after all, but these ones were par- _ tic _ -ularly bizarre.

He was the ringleader of a circus,  _ the _ circus he thought but he couldn’t remember, only the audience had been filled with dogs. Dogs in bow ties and pearls. 

And he wasn’t wearing any pants.

Awkward.

Oh and the box! There’d been a big red box his assistant was supposed to come out of... wait, was he a ringleader or a magician? Eh. didn’t matter. Whatever he was he had an assistant and they just wouldn’t  _ pop  _ out like they were supposed to.

It was  _ frustrating. _

And J hated being frustrated.

An old tingle raced down his spine as he snapped his gaze back to the door, metal jangling in the lock at last.  _ Company.  _ Claws itched beneath his skin, sharp and ready as the orderlies filled up the doorway, cuffs and chains all ready. Only the biggest and toughest for lil old him of course.

“Ooh kinky!” He lifted his eyebrows as they hooked him up, unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth. Even a gift horse with a BDSM fetish. “My safe word is  _ pineapple _ .”

The orderlies scowled at him, an anxious looking nurse trailing them with a big fat syringe as he was lead into the stone bowels of the Asylum. Ugh, no one in this place had a sense of humour. It was like they got it surgically removed to fit the sticks up their ass when they signed up.

His jokes were  _ wasted _ on them.

“So, where we off too?” He asked instead, the picture of innocence as they twisted snakelike through the building. A procession all for him, like Mardi Gras only with less flashing and beads.

“New shrink.” The orderly on the left grunted, “much good it will do.” 

Expectancy flared in the pit of his stomach, scenting fresh blood in the air as they took the familiar turn towards the high security interview rooms. He’d wanted an audience, a  _ confidant, _ he was getting it, some sixth sense telling him that this one was gonna be  _ fun. _

Already his mind was whirling forward, a neon dream of ideas flickering behind his eyelids as he thought of all the ways he could find to play with this new one. Slowly this time.  _ Carefully. _

Had to make it count!

 

\---

 

Despite her outward bravado by the time her first appointment rolled around she almost wished she’d run after all.

Three weeks.

Three long weeks with that folder looking at her every time she stepped foot into her office, waiting,  _ laughing  _ at her. The days dragging by in a blur of minor cases and safety checks. Three weeks and she hadn’t seen him once, not even in passing.

Not even when she’d lingered around the canteen as the patients ate, or again during rec time, waiting…  _ hoping  _ for a sight of him. To rip the band aid off early and get it over with, only to be denied over and over. He was in isolation and she just had to wait.

Well. The waiting was finally over.

Dr Eddows was at the door, face creased in worried understanding.

“It’s time.”

_ Be careful what you wish for Harls. _

Forcing a smile she gathered up her things, anticipation churning sharply in the pit of her stomach. Like a blender making smoothies out of her insides. She nodded brightly, mind a million miles away as Elizabeth chatted her way through the building. Outlining the setup, the security protocols, the trained orderlies that would be waiting. Elizabeth wouldn’t come in with her of course, that might show weakness, but she’d be right outside if Harley needed her.

Just give the signal, she kept saying, and the guards will take him away.

The words washed over her like water, impossible to fully grasp even as they threatened to drown her. 

“Thank you,” she said, reminding herself again that she was a professional as they reached the door. A highly trained professional with the crippling student loans to prove it, she could handle this. “I’ll take it from here.”

“Good luck,” Elizabeth covered Harley’s hands with her own, the sudden contact doing nothing to soothe her nerves. Not when she was looking at Harley like she was sending her to her execution. 

Like she was still silently begging her to run.

Pulling away Harley took a deep breath and snapped her head up, a non-threatening expression fixed on her face as she adjusted her glasses one last time and stepped briskly through the door.

It was now or never.

“Good Afternoon,” her sensible heels clicked against the stone floor, echoing like gunshots in the gloomy little interview room as she crossed to the table, “I'm Doctor Quinzel, I’ll be taking over your sessions for Doctor Morgan. So, how are you feeling today?”

“ _ Doctor… Quinzel? _ ”

It was only stubborn force of will that kept her from flinching as she seated herself at the unoccupied side of the table. It was cold metal with a loop in the middle, a chain running through it connected to a set of handcuffs. Handcuffs around a pair of pale wrists. Pale wrists belonging to a man whose voice she’d never forget.

“That’s right,” she clicked her pen, making a mindless scribble on the page to keep herself from having to look at him for a moment longer, “I understand your preference is to be referred to as ‘the Joker’ these days, why is that?”

Her gaze flickered up, heart stopping entirely as she met all too familiar eyes. Blue and green and red.

Worlds on fire.

It plunged her into the past, choking off her airway as she remembered a different time, a different her. The school canteen. The prom. The hideaway. His touch. Her breath hitched ever so slightly, the only outward sign she’d allow as she forced herself to look away again, making another scribble on her clipboard. 

He looked different and yet so much the same. His facial scars now faint traces around the edges of his features, pink against the whiteness of his skin even if his mouth was still slashed into that permanent grin. The years had formed sharp creases between his brows and around his mouth,  _ laugh lines. _

How fitting.

The real change was his hair, it had been red when she’d seen him last. Bright, bloody red that shone orange in the light. 

Now it was forest green and wilder than ever.

_ Stop it Harley,  _ she snapped at herself,  _ focus. _

She made herself meet his gaze again, pretending she was perfectly calm, the same bland expression on her face as she waited for his response.

“Well?” She prompted, tapping her pen.

“Hmmm...  _ The Joker _ , it’s got a nice ring to it right? Flashy,” he drawled the words with a lazy smile, this close she could see the bruises peppering his skin like kisses, the dark circles beneath his eyes almost swallowing them entirely as he jangled his chains, “That’s a name people are gonna remember. But you doc... well, you can call me  _ Mister J _ if you prefer.”

Her heart leapt, lungs squeezing painfully inside of her ribs as he tipped his head towards her with a knowing look. As her own voice played back inside her ears, young and bright and laughing.

_ Sure thing, Mistah Jay! _

It was a coincidence, she reminded herself, It had to be. There was no way, no way on earth he’d remember her. It had been so long ago and she’d changed so much, she… she…

She was better than this damn it. 

Keeping her posture in place, she nodded genially, “Mister J, then.” She couldn’t quite relax her jaw as she made a note of it, “How are you feeling today, Mister J?”

 

\---

 

How was he  _ feeling? _

There was a fucking question!

God damn he thought they’d been getting desperate when she stepped in with her click clack shoes looking like something out of a bad porno. Her sensible glasses and severe hairstyle only emphasising how out of place she was in the grimy little world of the Asylum, a far cry from the balding beauty that was Doctor Morgan, or the ever up tight Eddows.

This one… hell, she’d be almost  _ too _ easy to break.

But then she met his gaze and whatever it was that was beating blackly in his chest turned over like a ferris wheel. Bluebell eyes and blonde hair and those lips like… like  _ whatever _ , acting all innocent like she didn’t know who he was!

He ignored her question.

“What’s  _ your _ name doc?” Somebody was playing the xylophone on his ribs, a tuneful little ditty of shock and raw vicious feeling as she shifted in her seat.

“Doctor Quinzel,” she replied, “do you often find you have problems with your short term memory?”

It  _was_ her wasn't it? It had to be,  sitting there like butter wouldn’t melt. Like she hadn’t… he bit the thought off, her bright eyes magnified three times over as she calmly met his gaze through her glasses. Her pulse though, that she couldn’t hide. He could see it jumping in her neck like a kid on a trampoline.

He smiled.

“Your first name’s ‘ _ Doctor’?”  _ He scoffed, “jeez your parents must have really hated you.”

“My first name isn’t important in this situation, Jer- Mister J.”

The first slip up. She should have redirected him, asked him about his own parental issues instead. Junior error.

“How about if I guess it then?” he persisted, mimicking her innocence as he blinked at her, “Something old fashioned I think… right? Just a little bit  _ ugly.  _ Gertrude, maybe...  _ Ilene _ ?”

She flinched first, just a little, just enough.

“Do you hold a special significance with names?” a muscle twitched in her jaw as she recovered, clever girl, “Is that why you changed yours?”

“Aren’t you a little young to be a shrink, doc?” he ignored her again, earning a beautiful little flare of anger in return as he leant forward in his seat, “I don’t know if I want a- uh-  _ rookie  _ messing around in my head space, no offense. It’s just a guy can’t be too careful with who he lets diddle with his gray matter y’know and you… you look like a  _ teenager. _ ”

“Age is just a number.” She bit back so fast he flinched, the taste of blood and noodles in his mouth as she spat the words back at him.

Words he’d spoken so very very long ago, he remembered them now. Like it was yesterday. Like it had never happened at all.  That quiet little night a life time ago when they'd shown each other their scars and laughed until they choked.

It was her alright.

Something pulsed through him, running hot through the marrow of his bones. Triumph. Anger. A bastardized mixture of the two. He could see her shock, she hadn’t meant to say it. The vicious little twist to her words draining away and leaving her shell shocked, panic bursting in her eyes like fireworks. Pale fingers running across the backs of her hands, skin smooth and unblemished.

Anger won, an explosion of rage that burnt him up from the inside. Fury that she’d washed the scars away as easily as she’d washed him away. He’d  _ made  _ her damn it, put in some of his best work stripping her down, shaking her up and setting her loose on the world. Only… only it hadn’t worked had it?  She’d vanished into the night never to be seen again, and he’d gone back to his day job, letting her memory slip away to the back of him mind as he got back to work.  

Entirely forgotten until now. Until it all came rushing back in technicolour as fate handed her up to him on a silver platter. His eyes darted across her, cataloguing every inch of her in an instant. Stomach twisting as his gaze fell on her arm and the hand she’d unintentionally clenched around it.

Just how many of his scars had she removed? He’d kill her if she’d touched that one, here and now he’d _kill_ her.

“Just a number?” He repeated under his breath, subtly testing his chains as he leant even further towards her, coiled and ready to strike, “whoever told you that?”

He had to know. He had to see for himself.

“I-”

He didn’t let her finish, hurling himself across the table like a rabid animal. The chains screeched, his bones popping audibly as he grabbed her arm, too fast for her to stop him as he dragged back the sleeve.

There.

_ There. _

It practically glowed in the half light, beautiful shell pink and  _ gleaming.  _ An imperfect J, a little faded perhaps but otherwise untouched, just waiting for him. The sight washed through him, setting his heart beating faster as he traced a finger across the surface. 

He still had her.

“Knew it.” He grinned, smug satisfaction painting his features as she choked on her own breath.

Then the orderlies were on him and she was stumbling backward. Not quite so perfectly composed any more are you Harley Girl, he thought gleefully as the taser hit him.

“Nice to see you again, doc,” J laughed even as his body convulsed, dragged twitching from the room by the guards, “stop by anytime now.”

Harley.  _ His _ Harley.

Here. Now.

He’d never seen this joke coming that was for sure, but still, the question stood... Why? And more than that,  _ HOW?  _ How the hell had she forgotten him so easily? 

How had she moved on?

Ugh. He should have killed her when he had the chance. She’d hurled him out like  _ garbage,  _ abandoned him and  utterly moved on. She deserved to die for it, it would be the logical thing to do.

But nobody had ever accused him of being logical. 

“Yeesh,” he spat as they dragged him back to his cell, a needle shoved deep into his neck as he struggled against them.

It wouldn’t do.

He couldn’t have a failure on his hand, not now. Not when he had a  _ reputation  _ to uphold. And despite it all he could still see  _ it, _ that bright burning spark behind her perfectly bland facade. That whisper of madness that sent something itchy and possessive crawling over his skin.

He’d just have to try harder this time. Do it right. 

Warmth squeezed between his ribs, a vicious grin tearing at his mouth as the drugs kicked in and the world turned topsy turvy on him.

This time when he broke her he’d just have to make sure she stayed broken.

He could always kill her later.

 

 


	4. Bad Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley's playing emotional roulette and losing every time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whattup crew, it's your friendly neighbourhood authoress back with a freshly boiled chapter for your enjoyment!  
> It ended up being wayyyy longer than usual so I hope that's okay with y'all, there's a lot that goes down and I just couldn't bring myself to chop it into pieces ^^;   
> But yes - if you do like it I'd love to hear from you (seriously, the comment section had become my favourite place :-P) but anyway! I hope you enjoy <3

Silence rushed in, deafening her in the suddenly empty room as her heart tried to beat its way out of her throat. 

Her nonsense notes were scattered around her like snow, terror and adrenaline congealing in her veins as Doctor Eddows rushed in. Harley swallowed hard, something shifting beneath the horror, a feeling she didn’t have a name for. A warm, out of place squeeze in the pit of her stomach.

_ He remembered her. _

“Doctor Quinzel - are you alright? Harley?” Elizabeth had hold of her other arm, panic dripping from her voice as Harley fought to centre herself. 

Tucking the exposed scar carefully behind her back she faced her supervisor, phantom fingers lingering against her skin as she straightened up. A thrumming heat that seemed impossible to shake.

“His reaction was a little unexpected,” she heard herself say from a million miles away, almost too calm to be believed, “but I’m unharmed.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let them talk me into this,” Elizabeth’s brows drew together sharply, hands shaking as she led Harley from the empty interview room, his laugh still echoing in her head. “I knew you were too young to be put in with him like that, what were they  _ thinking.” _

Panic burst inside of her like a bottle rocket, a sharp crack in her chest that had her rushing to defend herself even as she silently screamed at her own reaction.

“No, really,” she said, the words tumbling out without her permission, “I think I was just a little under prepared. I’m sure with some time I’ll be more than capable of taking on this case, it really wasn’t that bad.”

What the flying fuck was  _ wrong _ with her?!

This was her get out clause, Elizabeth was talking like she’d never have to see Jerome… Joker… whatever the hell he was calling himself now again.

_ Mister J. _

She shuddered, the memory of his touch turning knife sharp as she remembered how his gaze made her feel. Like a butterfly in a killing jar, caught, helpless,  _ fatal.  _

Her teeth clenched, even now she felt trapped. Like she was standing at the back of her own mind, fists pounding against the glass as she watched her body move. As she heard herself plead to be allowed to keep the case she should be hurling full force away from her.

Was she really so stubborn that she’d give up her sanity just to prove she could handle it? To prove that she wasn’t the helpless, hopeless dumb blonde they all wrote her off as?

Yes. Yes, apparently she was.

“Really Doctor Eddows,” she even managed a weak smile, straightening out her sleeves self consciously and smoothing down her lapels, “I am confident I’m up to the task, please.”

“Harley… I…” indecision played out over the older woman’s eyes, Harley fighting herself over whether she wanted her to give in or not.  _ Take it away from me,  _ the sane part of her begged, _ please _ . “Okay. I’ll give you another shot, but we’ll give you access to his full case history this time.”

_ Or not. _

“Thank you Doctor Eddows,” she forced another smile, almost real this time even as her hope sputtered out like a flame. Her mom had always said her stubbornness would be the death of her.

Sharon Quinzel right about something, there really was a a first time for everything.

“On a provisional basis you understand,” Elizabeth shifted uncomfortably, fumbling for her pass as she swiped them out of the secure wing, “if the threat becomes too great…”

“I completely understand.”

That was a blatant lie.

Harley didn’t understand a thing.

Which was why she spent the week before their next session neck deep in research and sinking fast. Falling asleep on her moth eaten couch four nights out of five as she stayed up to the early hours reading everything ever written about Jerome Valeska, aka The Joker.

The psychiatrists before her had been a mess, dozens of conflicting diagnosis and medications prescribed and changed and prescribed again. Narcissistic personality disorder sure, but she doubted he was a paranoid schizophrenic, or a sexual sadist with impotence issues as one doctor had thought. Anxiolytics would do nothing for him.

What he was, objectively speaking, was  _ fascinating _ . 

Most of the violent inmates could be put into the same mould, they had a type, a trigger, and a distinct methodology. J was different. His victims split evenly between personally beneficial and absolutely random selection, his crimes ranging from petty theft and jaywalking to felony public disturbances and mass murder.

If she looked at it like that, like a  _ doctor,  _ she could almost convince herself she could handle it. That she’d have the power. He was in her world now and she had every intention of using this case to her greatest advantage, if she cracked him she could get any residency she wanted.

Westchester danced behind her eyes, pristine and perfect and so highly regarded. Clean white corridors drenched in sunlight. 

If she had to get a little dirty to get there so be it. That would be  _ justice. _

Maybe fate had sent her here for a reason. For _closure._

“Remove the chain please,” she breezed into their next appointment with her head held high, pretending her hands weren’t shaking as she gestured to the orderlies opposite. 

She could feel J watching her but she didn’t glance at him. Not yet. She wouldn’t show any weakness this time.

“What - Doctor Quinzel, we can’t do that,” the big one on the left looked at her like she’d just escaped a cell of her own, “what if he kills you?”

She sighed,  _ this was it. _ Steeling her spine she looked directly at her new patient, he was ready, staring at her almost hungrily as she fought to maintain her composure. To not get sucked into his darkness again.

“Do you have any intention of killing me, Mister J?”

His brow creased and she found herself wondering again what had happened to change him so dramatically. He’d been pale before sure but not like this, now he was almost icy white,  _ inhuman _ . Whatever it was had been missing from the file.

From  _ every  _ file.

“Hmm,” he considered, looking deathly serious for a handful of seconds before shaking his head, “nah, you’re safe today Doc.”

She wasn’t stupid enough to miss the unspoken meaning, she was safe  _ today.  _ Tomorrow would be another story.

Dragging her attention back to the orderlies she aimed for a comforting smile, “There you go. Now if you’d be so kind to do as I ask and step outside for the duration of the appointment. I believe all sessions should remain strictly confidential, to engender trust. Something I’m sure you’ll agree is impossible with third parties sitting in.”

She could tell they didn’t know what to say to that, shuffling awkwardly before nodding their compliance. 

“We’ll be right outside,” one of them said, eyes still flicking warily over the scene as if he was hoping she might change her mind, “if you’re sure.”

She was used to being underestimated.

“I’m certain,” nodding as kindly as she could she waved them away, “I promise I’ll scream if I need you.” 

Much good it would do her. The walls were a foot of solid stone, she’d have as much use  _ yodelling _ .

Door shut she seated herself at the metal table, making a show of shuffling her notes. Proving to herself as much as him that the ball was in her court now, she held the power. 

At least that’s what she told herself.

“Bold move,” J broke the silence first. He was still watching her, rubbing at his cuffed wrists distractedly. 

She knew him well enough to know that the handcuffs would be useless if he decided to go back on his word. But then again she doubted a chain and two large orderlies would have made that much difference either. If he wanted her dead she’d be dead, if he didn’t - well she didn’t want them to overhear too much. She still wasn’t sure what exactly the senior staff knew about her history with Gotham’s most infamous son and she didn’t want to fill them in yet.

Not when it would probably mean she’d get dropped from the case.

“Why the secrecy Harls?” He dropped his voice to a stage whisper, “Don’t want them to know about us?”

She clenched her jaw, setting her pen aside as she met his gaze again. Hating that even all these years later he still seemed to be able to read her like a book.

His eyes hadn’t changed, the same unbearable fire in them. The absolute conviction of the truly mad adding weight to every gaze, becoming almost a physical thing. Caressing and threatening in turn. 

But everything else… she tried to align it, the boy and the man and the shades he’d been through in between. A familiar face in a new palate, a cartoon evolution with jagged edges like a photo that had been enhanced too much.  

“What happened to you?” She didn’t realize she’d asked it until she heard the words.  _ Great start Quinzel. _

Disbelief flickered over his features like a shadow as he blinked at her, scars pulling as he worked his jaw.

“What happened to  _ me?”  _ He asked, “What the hell happened to  _ you?  _ Eight years Harley girl, you don’t write, you don’t call, you don’t  _ visit. _ ”

Coldness drenched her, shocking her to the bone like she’d just been plunged into ice water. 

How dare he?

How fucking  _ dare  _ he?

Every semblance of her plan vanished, her carefully maintained composure shattering like a mirror as she stared at him.

“You think I’d  _ visit  _ you? You locked me up.” She half whispered, hands shaking so hard the table rattled. “ _ You locked me up.” _

The rage was new to her, a feeling so cold that it  _ burnt  _ as she glared at him. Frost forming over her insides, making her immune to fear as his face twisted, his fists slamming into the table hard enough to leave dents.

_ “I set you free.”  _ He growled, voice low and vicious and full of meaning. His expression moved like quicksilver, disbelief to rage to a sudden distant wistfulness _ ,  _ “I tried to at least.”

A sharp prickling formed behind her eyes, heart throbbing in her chest as he gazed at her with such disappointment she could barely stand it.

“You tortured me.” She wouldn’t cry. Not now. She hadn’t then, never to his face at least, and she damn well wouldn’t start now. “You made me do terrible things.”

He just looked at her, one emerald eyebrow flicking up as he said, “do you really believe that, Harls?”

 

\---

 

Oh she was a confuser alright, that much hadn’t changed he was pleased to see. One of those Russian dolls with all the people inside.

The shrink. The fragile little girl. The firecracker. _The_ _murderer._

He’d wondered how she’d squared that little bit of information away, slotted it into her  _ perfect  _ little life like a tetris block. Now he knew.

She blamed him.

_ Him. _

He’d only ever tried to help her, tried to break down the tower society had trapped her in, and this was the thanks he got for it?

She was fooling herself. But she couldn’t fool him.

Fighting the ugly kick of feelings she stirred in him he slumped back in his chair. Kicking his feet up on the table like he didn’t have a care in the world as he wiggled his toes in the slip on shoes they forced on them. So unfashionable. At least he looked good in stripes.

“So how’s life been treating you, Harls?” He asked when she made no move to speak again, the panic still flickering back and forth in her eyes like two cats watching a tennis match. “Been up to much?”

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, throat bobbing as she swallowed hard and spoke at last in an icy flatness, “Medical school.”

“You always were a smart kid,” he grinned, wheels whirring as he sized her up, “gotta nice boyfriend? Cat? Two kids and a white picket fence?”

Harley cleared her throat, seeming to come to herself at last, shoulders straightening as her face turned entirely impassive again. Doctor Barbie in the flesh.

“My personal life isn’t important.”

He didn’t like that. Her personal life was very important, it would shape the things to come after all. Also… it wasn’t a  _ no.  _ He hid the twist of rage that came with that thought, the idea that someone else had dared play with his property.

Because she was his, undoubtedly. Even if he didn’t know quite what to do with her anymore.

“I’m far more interested in your life, Mister J,” she continued with a clinical calmness that infuriated him, “why don’t you tell me about you’ve been up to?”

Oh this was worse than the blame, so SO much worse. He’d take her vicious and fighting over this detached composure any day. That he could work with. This… this was hard plastic and unreachable. 

“Oh y’know,” he made a show of shrugging, scratching at his scars thoughtlessly as his gaze flickered around the room, “keeping busy.”

“Busy doing what, Mister Jay?” she pressed, each word perfectly enunciated in her news anchor best. Devoid of any colour.

He felt his eye twitch, the thread thin control on his temper turning into a garrote wire. One he knew _exactly_ how to wield.  There was no way he was letting her carry on their sessions like this.

“Well, I tried to perk up my cooking skills awhile back,” he said, setting the bait. Drinking in her reaction from under hooded eyes as she leant forward ever so slightly.

“Hobbies are important,” she smiled patronizingly, “what type of food?”

“Korean, mostly,” he picked at his teeth, meeting her full in the eye as he closed the trap, “I picked up this  _ killer _ recipe for barbecued doberman.”

_ There _ .

There was the reaction, her mouth thinning in pain. Blue eyes shining behind those stupid frames as the pen slipped from her grasp, the colour draining from her face so fast he thought she might faint.

She covered it as quickly as she could, drawing in a sharp breath as she snatched up her pen and forced her features into stillness, but it was too late. He’d seen the fault line, petty victory and anger warring for control of him.

It had been eight years. Eight long years. And it was still the  _ animals  _ that got to her.

Not him. Not them.

The fucking  _ dogs. _

“Do you have a history of cruelty towards animals?” she asked, voice shaking ever so slightly, something undeniably  _ vicious  _ in her tone, “perhaps as a child when you lived with your  _ mother _ at the circus?”

Ooooh there she was!

The perfect doctor melting into something harsher, something  _ realer.  _ His Harley emerging from the molten plastic with raw anger in her eyes. Hatred and passion and  _ life. _

“How about you Harls?” He grinned, leaning back in his chair with his arms folded across his stomach as he contemplated her, “got any new sob stories you wanna share about mommy dearest? Or was the dead dog enough - the  _ other  _ dead dog, jeez you really rack em up dontcha?”

Her cupid’s bow lips drew back in something more snarl than smile, a fire already halfway to madness in her eyes as she scribbled a note. 

“Do you have a fixation with mothers in particular?” she asked almost sweetly even as her gaze spat embers at him, “residual feelings perhaps from committing matricide yourself?”

“Hey,” he tilted his head, gaze sharpening as his adrenaline started going properly for the first time in a long time, “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

Her jaw tightened.

Oh yeah.  _ This _ he could work with.

 

—-

 

That bastard.

That rat fucking bastard.

He’d gotten to her,  _ again,  _ after everything she’d told herself, everything she’d tried. It took one word, one  _ look,  _ and she’d forgotten everything else.

He’d crawled into her head like he’d never left.

She’d pulled herself up afterwards but she knew he’d seen the cracks. Seen her pain when he’d brought up the dogs…

Her heart squeezed painfully, a steady thud of self recriminations as she parked her shitty car outside her shitty apartment in her shitty neighbourhood in her brand spanking new shitty life. 

He knew what they meant to her… he knew and he...

Slamming the door so hard plaster rained from the ceiling she fought to marshal herself, to look around the dingy little apartment and not burst into frustrated tears. Or hit something.

His face stared back at her from every surface. Screeds of paper coating the coffee table, the sofa, the sides, the bed, files and newspaper articles and half-formed diagnosis. Even here she couldn’t escape from him, his gaze mocking her from ever angle.

Biting the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted copper she turned on her heel, marching into her cramped bedroom and dragging a half-decent dress from the suitcase she still hadn’t fully unpacked. A needle-hot shower and a fresh coat of lipstick later and she was heading out into the city.

As far as she was concerned there was only one prescription for her situation, a night out with copious amounts of alcohol, loud music, and fingers crossed some  _ sane  _ company. Maybe that would get her head on straight.

Maybe then she could forget him. Maybe then she could prove she was still  _ her. _

She didn’t realize it was a Friday night until the cab driver she’d hailed dumped her in front of what he assured her was a good night spot, the queue streaming out of the door as she stepped into the chilly night air. The days had melted together to her, one long messy stretch of research and anticipation and horror.

But she wasn’t going to think about that, no she was gonna turn her messed up feelings into an aggressively good time and forget all about the Asylum.

Tilting her chin she aimed her brightest smile at the door man, getting in with a wave and a handful of drink tickets and heading straight for the bar. She still had it.

“Manhattan, straight up,” she called over the pulsing music, skin feeling too hot, too tight for her body as she tried to slip into her life before. Just another bar in the lower east side after a double shift. Another drink, another stranger.

“Put it on my tab Rhys,” someone cut in, tall and dark in a perfectly tailored suit and Italian loafers. He smiled at her, half smarm half shark as she evaluated him with her eyes.

Dark hair and blue eyes, too much gray in the them as he smirked at her. Rich, narcissistic, probably a mobster type with those shoes. Would most likely spend the evening alternating between bragging about his sports cars and trying to charm his way into her pants.

Safe.

_ Boring _ , a quiet voice whispered at the back of her mind,  _ ordinary. _

“Thanks,” she beamed through gritted teeth, determined to treat him to her flirtatious best, “I’m Harley.”

“Marco Inanucchi,” he smirked as if that was supposed to mean something to her, grasping her hand just a little longer than was strictly necessary when she held it out to him, “you new in town, Harley?”

His palm was clammy, cold even in the crush of the bar. She fought not to wince, taking a sip of her drink before replying with a self-deprecating little laugh, “That obvious, huh?”

He was handsome enough though, she supposed, in a generic sort of way. Maybe she should give him a chance. 

“Ofcourse,” definitely more smarm now, practically oozing with it as his dull blue eyes raked over her, “there’s no way I wouldn’t know someone as beautiful as you otherwise.”

_ Eesh. _

“You’re quite the charmer,” she said, drinking a little faster as his gaze dropped to her cleavage for the third time in as many seconds.

“And a local,” his arm was resting on the bar behind her now, fingers catching at the dip in her dress. A little too personal for her taste but she shrugged her concern off, “I’d love to take you to dinner sometime, I know all the best places.” 

Yeah right, like he was interested in anything beyond the morning, but hey, neither was she. Maybe she just needed some good old fashioned animal passion to knock the gloom away and remind her that life was for living. 

_ Like he knows the first thing about passion. _ The voice said again, laughingly this time. She shrugged it off, eyeing him up sharply she weighed up her options, he was a sleaze bag but he was interested and available. No wedding ring. No chronic halitosis. Why not?

She pouted prettily, circling the rim of her glass with a finger as she peered up at him through her lashes, “Where did you have in mind?”

“Depends on what you like baby,” his hand was on her skin now, cold fingers tracing circles against her back, “Chinese? Italian? I know a great barbecue place around the corner that’s open all night. Or of course we could just go back to my apartment, I’m sure I could whip you something up...”

She stopped listening halfway through the sentence, her whole body tensing up like she’d been electrocuted as his voice turned dangerous.

_ I picked up this killer recipe for barbecued doberman. _

The hand against her back was suddenly too hot. Too sharp. Drawing blood as she struggled for breath, his eyes glinting almost green in the dim light as he leant too close to her. Always too close. Suffocating her with his presence.

“I have to go,” she gasped, pulling herself away from him. Her glass tilting dangerously as she slammed it back on the counter, “I have to go.”

“Wait - Harley? What the-” he grabbed her arm, fingers raking across her scar.

_ His scar. _

The sensation burst beneath her skin, spreading like wildfire over her nerves as she wrenched her arm free and darted into the crowd. This had been a bad idea, a really really bad idea. There were too many people all crushing in on her, looking at her,  _ through  _ her. She bumped into someone, tall and wiry in a striped shirt. His hair shining green. No black. No  _ green _ . 

Stomach twisting she pelted out of the exit as fast as her less than sensible heels would allow, gulping in lung fulls of cold night air as her insides revolted against her.

Why couldn’t she escape him?

What was  _ wrong _ with her?

Dropping to sit against the wall she buried her head in her hands, shoulders shaking in frustration as the laughter echoed around her head. The cold creeping up from the sidewalk sat heavily in her bones, a numbing ache as the day replayed in her head. Her whole identity unravelling like a sweater in front of her, all he had to do was pull the right thread and  _ boom. _

And Bud… Lou… she had just  _ left  _ them. Abandoned them like she’d abandoned… no she hadn’t abandoned  _ him.  _ She didn’t owe him anything. He hadn’t made her or saved her or whatever the fuck else he thought.

He was a trauma.

_ Right? _

A sob wracked through her, blinded by tears as the question mark dangled. If she was right, if she’d done the right thing in escaping him like she always believed she had… then why did she still feel so  _ guilty? _

_ Eight years. You don’t call. You don’t write. _

It twisted up inside of her, a writhing mess at how disappointed in her he’d been, how  _ hurt  _ he’d looked for that one split second before the anger had risen. 

It wasn’t her fault. It couldn’t be.

“Are you alright, miss?” 

She flinched as a hand brushed her shoulder, someone was crouched next to her. She blinked at him through her tears, blandly handsome, dark brown hair and beetle black eyes. Kind eyes she thought.

Nothing like J’s _. _

Relaxing just a little she let out a weak, hiccupy laugh, “not really.”

“Rough day?” He asked, holding out a hand to help her up and then taking a respectable step back when she’d found her feet.

“Rough  _ month.”   _ She shook her head, suddenly feeling utterly ridiculous as she dashed at her eyes. She was a grown woman crying outside of a bar in the middle of the night, if her professors could see her now.

“I get that,” he smiled wanly, no trace of anything sinister in his face as he gestured to the line of waiting taxis, “let me get you a cab. Things always look better in the morning.”

“I doubt they could look worse,” she scrubbed the mascara from under her eyes as he held the door open for her, even going so far as to hand a handful of notes to the driver. “Thank you,” she added and was surprised to find she meant it, “I’m Harley by the way.”

“Bruce,” He shook her hand firmly, holding on for just the right amount of time before releasing her, “and you’re very welcome, Harley. I hope you have a better tomorrow.”

“You too.”

She spent the ride home putting herself together again, feeling weirdly better for the sobbing. _ Clearer.  _ It was a moment of weakness, she could see that now, one that she could have all too easily predicted if she’d been thinking straight. Too many sleepless nights reading his files, too many memories dredged up all at once, was it at all surprising that she’d reacted emotionally?

The only shocking thing was that it hadn’t happened sooner. No, she understood it now, and if she understood it she could cope with it. She could  _ fix  _ it.

Mr J was not another patient and she could never be just another doctor to him, she knew that now. They had  _ history  _ and it was about time she started using it to her advantage, pulling on that connection to get things out of him that no one else could.

Looking out at the street lit city she felt herself calming, grimly excited to get back to work again as the cab rolled on. 

 


	5. Blank Space

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pratt falls and fortune telling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops didn't think I'd make this update but here we are! Got it out just in time! :D  
> I really hope you guys like it, I can't tell you how much I appreciate your comments and reactions - they keep me writing! <333

 

Screech. Wobble. Thud.

Screech. Wobble. Thud.

J tilted his chair back, balancing on its back legs before dropping it to the floor again. 

His Harley girl had gotten better after those first few appointments, he had to give her that, slowly seeming to find her balance. The line between the perfect plastic professional and the absolute wreck he so fondly remembered blurring and settling into something in between.

Something he could  _ work  _ with.

Something he could work with If she  _ ever bothered to show up _ that was.

Sheesh, what was taking her so long? Ice ages had passed and she had yet to make her grand entrance, abandoning him in the interview room with nothing but two fat guys and a chair to entertain him. 

And he  _ needed  _ entertainment, boredom was hazardous to the health. 

Not his health of course… but  _ someone's _ .

Screech. Wobble.  _ Thud. _

The orderly opposite him winced, his eye twitching just a little. J grinned. Someone like that guy.

Screeeeeech. Wobble.  _ Thud. _

His name was Frank, wasn’t it? No! Spanky! Spanky Franky. Let it never be said of Spanky that he spared the rod and spared the patient. Oh no, he liked to make his presence known, hit first talk later. Take out his troubles on a nicely chained up nutjob who couldn’t fight back. 

“Pathetic.” He said to the ceiling, earning another flinch as he tipped his chair back again. Watching from under his lashes as the hitch in Spanky’s jaw jumped up to a full blown spasm.

Screeeeeeeech. -Twitch- Wobble. -Twitch-  _ THUD! _

“Cut that shit out.” Spanky spat, face beat red.

J grinned, edging ever so slowly back on his chair as he blinked innocently at the guard. “Cut  _ what  _ out, Spanky?”

Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeech. Wobble-

Spanky lashed out, kicking the chair out from under him and sending J rolling to the floor. His head cracked against the flagstones, sending cartoon blue birds spinning in front of his eyes as he laughed and laughed.

Spanky popped like a cork in a bottle, the veins in his head sticking out like he’d been chowing ‘roids for breakfast as he lumbered over. Fists clenched, ready to strike.

It was too easy - too easy! One word now and-

“What’s the meaning of this?”

Saved by the shrink. The sharp clack of heels rang through his echoing skull, a drum beat of anger as she appeared in his circle of vision.

Oooh mommy was home and she was  _ pissed. _

“Get him up right now,” she snapped, putting Spanky directly in his place as she folded her arms. Red mouth set in a severe line as they hurried to comply.

“He was-“ Spanky started as he wedged his sausage fingers under J’s armpits and hauled him back into the chair.

She silenced him with a look.

“I don’t care what he was doing, Mr Harrison.” he could keep a six pack chilled for a week in her tone, “he is our patient and we have a duty of care. Now, if you’ve quite finished molesting him you may step outside.”

“Yowzer Harls, that was  _ cold _ ,” J snickered as the door snapped closed, attention drifting as bright burst of light popped across his vision. One of them was shaped like a diamond, another a kitty cat- 

“You’re hurt.” Some of the frost had dropped from her tone and he was surprised to find she hadn’t retreated to her chair like she normally did, instead she was at his shoulder, slender fingers running through his hair.

“I’ve had worse,” his gaze ticked over to her dazedly, inhaling the scent of vanilla shampoo and hand sanitizer as she worked, “I got a thick skull - ow! Easy there doc!”

She shushed him. 

_ Him. _

What a novelty! Her pointy little fingers still poking and prodding at his sore bits in an ever so professional manner. 

“Hold still and let me see,” she jabbed his shoulder, forcing him to look ahead as she examined him, “Oh, you’re bleeding-“

Her fingertips were sticky red as she pulled them back, mouth parting in surprise.

He grabbed the opportunity.

“Oooh!” his cuffs jangled as he seized hold of her wrist, holding tight as he slicked her fingers over his lips, trying to drag them up his scars before she pulled away with a startled yelp, “don’t look at me like that, Harls! I gotta look my best for our appointment today, don’t I?”

“You-“ he thought for a minute she was gonna get angry again, or distant, start yelling or screaming or just straight up leave. Instead she just shook her head, a faint pink stain colouring her cheeks as she said, “You’re ridiculous.”

Pulling a little first aid kit from her bag she disappeared behind him again, her hands in his hair once more. Tugging at the roots in a way that was not entirely displeasing. 

“Don’t pretend you’d ever go out without your face on either,” he smacked his lips together as she sprayed something sharp against the cut. The pain stinging through him before she’d slapped a dressing over it, probably harder than was strictly necessary. Pulling back to wash her hands with a wet wipe she dug something else from her bag of tricks.

“If I shine this in your eyes to make sure you’re not brain damaged are you going to try and bite my hand off again?” She asked him blandly, waving a little flashlight in her hand.

“No promises,” he grinned, snapping his teeth at her and getting the faintest mouth twitch in return.

Oh victory was tasting sweeter by the second.

“Just follow the light.”

He did the opposite, rolling his eyes left and right before she sighed and gave up.

“If you’re able to be this annoying I’m pretty sure you don’t have a concussion.” 

“That your professional opinion doc?” he called after her as she clicked away, something lithe and almost musical in her step. A born performer.

A long forgotten tingle raced beneath his skin, zesty and pleasant. He’d figured his reaction to her had been a teenage phase, one that had never really repeated after she vanished and he returned to the uncomplicated joy of mayhem and madness.

But now… now he wasn’t so sure. He was definitely feeling just a little bit squirrelly. 

_ Fascinating. _

He wondered what her kisses would be like now. Would she still taste like bubblegum and blood?

Licking his lips he folded his legs up under him, cross legged in the metal chair as she sat opposite him and flicked open her notes.

“Although it’s good to know you’re actually a doctor, Harls,” he added, copper sweet against his tongue as she met his gaze, “I was pretty sure you’d just made it up to  _ impress _ me.”

Her eyebrows rose, flicking up in a look of such deadpan disbelief that he found himself laughing all over again.

She was still funny too!

“I’m sorry for the delayed start,” she said after a moment, clearing her throat as she switched into professional mode, “but if you’re ready we can-“

“What was it?” He cut her off, drinking in the flicker-fast cloud of emotion rolling over features. Annoyance, anger, not at him though. At someone else. “What kept cha?”

“Nothing important,” another little eye twitch as she clenched and unclenched her hands, “just some extraneous paperwork.”

Suuuuure he believed that.

“Sounds like a pain,” he edged carefully

She sighed, “yeah.” Her gaze flickered back to his head again, something he could almost mistake as concern in her eyes as she added, “are you sure you’re okay to continue the session?”

Now was she talking to him or herself?

“I’m a tough nut to crack, Harls,” he grinned, eyebrows hitching up as he gave her a knowing look, “we got that in common.”

She smiled, a wry tired expression that reminded him of times past, “I suppose we do.”

They had a lot more in common than that, he knew, now he just had to prove it...

 

—-

 

Hair slipped between her fingers, silk soft and imminently touchable. Green one moment, red the next, a shifting band of colours as she worked her hands through it over and over.

It belonged to a man, his head resting in her lap as she carded her fingers back and forth through its softness. One of his arms was hooked back around her solid and strangely comforting as he pressed a knife between her ribs.

“Not there,” she chastised as the knife dug in, pain welling ruby red where it pierced her skin, “second and third ribs remember.”

She tugged on his hair until he moved, hands slipping away suddenly. Wet and sticky.

“Oh,” she blinked, wiggling her red fingers as he sat up, “you’re bleeding…”

“It’s not me,” he murmured, crouching over her. It was too dark to see his face, but the knife glinted brightly as he placed it over her chest. Cold metal against the big red X someone had drawn over her heart. “It’s you.”

The knife went in, stabbing her so hard she woke up gasping.

The dreams were getting worse.

She told herself it was to be expected, the increased contact, the acknowledgement of past memories. It was a common side effect. She convinced herself the dreams didn’t matter as she washed them away each morning in the shower, scrubbing hard enough to hurt when they clung like syrup to her skin. 

There was a silver lining though, even as her nights got worse her days got better. It was amazing how much easier it all became when she gave herself permission to deal with the sessions  _ her  _ way. Throwing her textbooks and her lecture notes out of the window along with every accepted method of psychiatric care whether Doctor Eddows liked it or not.

She’d already cornered Harley once, not a week after her second session with J, carefully expressing her new concerns. Something about a board member worried about the toll this case would take on her?

What did they know? She’d never even  _ met  _ them!

Still, she’d dealt with it. Reassuring Elizabeth as firmly as she could that she could handle the case even as her blood boiled at their doubt. Nothing had been said since, a good sign she thought. This was her case and she wasn’t giving it up without a fight.

“Why do you do it?” She asked the next time she saw J, chin resting heavily on her hand as she tried to read him again. To reconcile the man and the nightmare.

“Do what?” He watched her intently, that same laser focus he so often wielded as a weapon now aimed passively at her. Like it was just waiting to be switched on. 

She shrugged, “any of it?”

He gave her a look so serious she felt herself holding her breath, perfectly still under his gaze as something in her stomach fluttered.

“Rap music,” he said seriously, “and video games. Oh - oh and violent movies too.”

She snorted despite herself, a faint smile tracing her lips as she rolled her eyes. Some things weren’t meant to be reconciled it seemed, only accepted.

“Fine,” she clicked her pen off and set it aside, “How about today you just tell me a story about your life then, Mister j? About anything you want. Past, present, future, consider me curious.”

He seemed more talkative when he felt like he was in control of the conversation, something she was learning to use to her advantage. Willing to give up ground if it meant getting him to open up, even a little.

“Curiosity killed the cat Harls,” he grinned, always so ready with a come back. She wouldn’t give him the chance to divert her today though, to change the subject or try to  _ fluster  _ her like he sometimes did. 

“But satisfaction brought it back,” she raised her eyebrows, a dare in her gaze as she held her nerve. “So  _ satisfy _ me.”

Oh that got him! His gaze flickering as a faint vibration that seemed to travel through him, like a machine with a glitch as a dozen calculations ran behind his slashed smile. She held his gaze, barely breathing as she kept her expression utterly neutral. 

“Fine! Let it never be said that I didn’t know how to  _ please _ the laydees,” just like that he perked up again, his eyebrows dancing as he leant forward, “once upon a time there was a little boy who lived with the circus.”

Oh shit. It worked!

_ It worked! _

It took every inch of her composure not to snatch her pen back up again and start scribbling, forcing her hands to relax. To look as if she was just blandly interested as her heart leapt up into her throat.

His childhood, this was a  _ goldmine.  _ And one wrong move now and she’d break the moment.

“Now this boy, he was a good enough kid, but nobody much liked him hanging around. He was a ginger, whattya expect.” He gave her a knowing look, almost daring her to react as she kept her gaze focused but steady, “his ma kicked him out a lot, sent him to wander. So anyway, this one year they had a - a newbie. Transplant from another circus come to help out in the fortune teller booth, now the fortune teller already there - a crotchety old fellow-”

_ His father,  _ she thought,  _ oh my God he’s talking about his father. _

“Was decent enough to the boy, let him kick about sometimes, so the newcomer did too. She was a big woman, hair like black straw with the most impressive beard you ever saw. The kid - well he thought she could have made a  _ fortune  _ doubling up, a bearded lady  _ and  _ a fortune teller? That’s like - damn that’s a gift money can’t buy! She was missing a trick and he knew it.”

She was nodding, mouth twitching despite herself as she imagined it. Realising suddenly that she’d leant almost double in her chair, pin focused as his grin widened. He shifted in his seat, leaning even further forward, just as close as she was.

He had her and he knew it.

“So one day the curiosity got the best of him, he couldn’t understand why she was missing out on so much money right? And he couldn’t ask the old guy cos well, he was  _ blind,  _ he was literally the only one that could see it and it was driving him nuts! So… he went into her tent-” he dragged the pause out before his mouth spilt into a slow steady grin, “and asked her directly? ‘ _ Hey Madame Rosina, how come you only tell fortunes? Why don’t you advertise as the bearded lady too and really make a killing? _ ”

Harley couldn’t help herself. She giggled, hand pressed tight against her mouth as his eyes flashed and sparked. Imagining the curious,  _ tactless _ child he might once have been.

“What happened?” She asked breathlessly, clearing her throat to cover the sound of her laughter.

“She said ‘ _ come here and I’ll make a killing of you you little shit,”  _ and he was summarily kicked the hell out that’s what!” He snorted, “Slapped right back into his mom’s trailer until he learnt some damn manners.”

Her heart dropped so sharply it hurt. Sympathy rushing through her chest as she suddenly remembered the things he hadn’t mentioned. The scars he wasn’t so willing to show.

Snake bites. Dozens of them. All over his arms…

“But-” his head jumped up again, eyes bright as flames as he grinned at her, “not before she taught him how to read palms. How ‘bout it kid, wanna see what the future holds?”

“I-” she stuttered, head spinning before she found herself sticking her hand out to him, “sure, why not.”

He was up before she could register it, moving across the room to perch in front of her on the table. Her breath caught, scrabbling to move her notes out of the way as he made himself comfortable before plucking up her hand. His touch firm, no nonsense as he held it up to his face and squinted carefully at her palm.

“Hmmm let’s see then Harls,” he murmured, her heart beating uncomfortably loudly as he perused her skin like he really could see her future in it, “I’m a bit out of practice so no judgement, ‘kay? Ah, here - long life line, that’s good. Money… eh up and down, highs and lows.” He tilted his head, lips pursing as he let out a low whistle, fingertips trailing whisper soft against her palm, “that love line though Harls. Jeez, that’s messed up. Your boyfriend’s a fucking danger to you.”

“I don’t have-” she bit the words off before she could finish them, snatching her hand back and standing. “That’s enough for today I think.”

It was too late, he’d gotten the reaction he’d wanted, that smug smile curling on his lips as he clambered to his feet, suddenly towering over her. Had he always been that tall? He hadn’t seemed quite so imposing when she was younger now… now it was hard to breathe.

“You sure  _ Harls?”  _ He drew her name out, the sound rumbling through her as he crowded her space. He smelt like cheap soap and gunpowder and something almost chemically, like marker pens. “I’m sure there’s a whole  _ buncha _ stuff I could foretell.”

She swallowed hard, and nodded. Hands ever so slightly shaky as she picked up her notes.

“Next time maybe.”

She didn’t stop until she was back in her office, shutting the door tightly before bracing herself against it and exhaling. A long, shuddering sigh that seemed to come up from the soles of her feet, wracking all the way through it as she let the moment go. 

She’d gotten to involved in his past, she saw that now, too lenient. She’d slipped, given him a personal detail he didn’t need. She would be more careful next time.

Only… only why had her heart thumped quite so loudly when he’d looked up over her hand at her, his mouth quirking as he talked about her love life. Looking at her like he knew a secret she didn’t.

A secret she was 100% sure she didn’t want to know.

 

\---

 

If there was an Olympic category for pacing, J was pretty sure he’d be a gold medal contender. Stalking the cramped hole of a cell they stuck him in until he’d left grooves in the flagstones.

He needed to move, it was always easier to think when he was moving.

If he was outside he could  _ do  _ something, settle his mind with a touch of mayhem. A little caper to soothe the soul, chase Bats around a rooftop for a while. Blow up a school bus.

_ Something. _

In here, alone, there was just the pacing. Hands drumming against his thigh as he worked around the edges like a shark in a tank, swim or die.

Harley.

Harley Harley Harley girl.

Flexing his hand he turned on his heel and paced the other way, gears whirring away in his brain as he considered her. He’d always thoughts Bats would be the defining relationship in his life, the grand Shakespearean comedy of it as they tried to kill each other nightly in a fallen city. But even old pointy ears couldn’t hold his attention now, his mind flickering back to her instead. Picking apart each expression, each word, like he was dissecting frogs in art class.

The question remained…

Why hadn’t he lied to her?

He could have done, she probably expected as much. That’s what he did these days after all, his past becoming more and more of a haze as the years rolled by. A choose your own adventure where he picked the pages at random.

But this time… he hadn’t.

_ Why _ hadn’t he?

Was the truth just a better story? That was the way to get people after all, if you could make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, you could own them completely. 

He could…

No. He was getting ahead of himself.

Another quick turn and he was marching the other way, squinting up at the thin trickle of light coming through the high up window. Hazy green through the iron bars.

_ So satisfy me. _

He ground his teeth together, something hot bursting beneath his skin as she stared at him from the shadows with those sultry blue eyes. Utterly dead pan and hilarious and…

And it all came down to one thing, he thought, one question that had to be answered before anything else.

Was she worth the effort?

It was fun toying with her now, sure, but in the end he’d have to make a  _ decision _ , whether to create or to destroy.

Usually he was more of a destroyer than a maker, and they had  _ history  _ after all _.  _ He’d been burned by her before, back when she’d pulled her Houdini routine without a word and left him hanging. He’d forgotten about her after that, like he did everything that wasn’t immediately in front of him sparkling in neon colours, but maybe there’d always been a part of him way back in the darkest corner of his mind that thought she was gonna come back. That wanted her too.

A part of him that hated to see wasted potential.

  
  



	6. Out of the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley makes a friend.  
> J makes a decision.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! Just a lil note on this one - I may have somewhat/completely changed Ivy's personality for this chapter, I could justify it by saying 8 years is a long time for someone to grow but tbh I just am not a fan with what they're doing with her character in Gotham atm ^^;  
> Other than that it's business as normal, or at least as normal as it can get in the world of Arkham! I really hope you enjoy the chapter guys! :D

  
  


The days inbetween her sessions with J passed in a blur, switching between shifts at the infirmary to make up her hours and acting as a second for other, more worldly, psychiatrists. 

She’d met half of the Asylums most infamous inmates by the time her third month rolled around. The VIP lounge of crazies.

In fact, just today she’d had to take over a last minute assessment with the infamous Poison Ivy. Dr Lyman had called in sick and suddenly she was thrust into the spotlight once more, trying her hardest to appear more confident than she was as she sat down opposite the city’s most feared eco terrorist. As she ran through the questions she had absolutely no respect for.

The Asylums assessment structure was a joke, that had become blatantly obvious during her first month with J. They were too rigid, too formal, the questions designed for sharp, absolute answers that failed to encompass even half of the patients issues. She had doubted they’d been any more useful for diagnosing Poison Ivy than they had been for any of the other patients she’d worked with.

She was right.

“It is neither a fixation or a fetish, my connection to the natural world is a…  _ calling.  _ Fate even. _ ” _ Ivy had said, effortless elegant even in her Arkham stripes, chained hands flicking expressively, “your being far too simplistic in your questions, doctor.”

“I can’t disagree,” Harley had snorted despite herself, filling in another empty box with what her superior would want to see, “but unfortunately it’s all  _ they  _ let us work  with.”

“It's frustrating to be constrained, isn’t it?” Ivy flicked up a brow, a half smile on her face and Harley found herself smiling back.

Contrary the files she’d been given about the dangerous, deranged Poison Ivy the woman she’d met had been anything but. She’d been well spoken, composed, passionate... okay, A little  _ too _ passionate perhaps, but it made a change from the disaffected haze of the people Harley met outside of the Asylum walls. 

And… and she had a  _ point _ , didn’t she?

The government, big corporations, they were  _ destroying  _ the planet. It was a fact. So could Harley really blame her temporary patient for going to desperate measures to try to fix it? 

“You’re the Joker’s new shrink aren’t you?” Ivy had asked at the end of the session, taking her completely by surprise as she gathered up her notes.

“How did you know that?” She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, something serious crossing Ivy’s face. The same expression she got when talking about the thwarted efforts to save the Gotham Greens.

“There’s gossip, even here,” Ivy shrugged, “let me give you a warning Doctor Quinzel, if only because you seem more aware than most of the meat sacks running this place,  _ be careful of the clown. _ ”

Harley blinked, heart jumping strangely at the tense look Ivy gave her. The moment breaking like glass as someone rapped at the door, two of the orderlies stepping in to escort the patient back to her cell.

“I… will do,” she swallowed hard, tucking her notes under her arm as she stood, “thank you for your concern Ivy.”

Ivy nodded, letting the burly men shackle her again before she glanced back, an almost fragile desperation in her face.

“And you’ll put that request in for me?” she called as they led her away, “for a window garden?”

“I will, I promise.”

She meant it.

The application was sitting in front of her on her desk now with the rest of her files. Harley couldn’t see the harm in it, I wasn’t like she was authorizing her to grow deadly nightshade or anything, just a small garden. Some grass, some daisies, something to help her reconnect with the outside world, the lack of which seemed to cause greater and greater damage to her psyche by the day. Becoming something that no amount of benzos would fix.

Well, they were here to  _ help  _ the patients after all, weren’t they?

The uncertainty weighed her down, turning her hands leaden as she sifted through the myriad of paperwork. Forms and files and notes on patients she couldn’t help but feel were being caged instead of rehabilitated. Like it was damage control, not doctoring.

“Harley? You in?” someone called from her door.

Harley shot up fast enough her spine made a sound like a shotgun, wincing she rubbed at her neck, standing respectfully as she greeted her supervisor.

“Elizabeth, sorry,” switching to her office smile she restacked the screeds of paper in front of her, “I was miles away.”

“I thought you must have been, I’ve been knocking for five minutes,” the words were softened with a tired laugh, a wan smile on her face as she propped herself against the door frame, “I just came by to see if you have the updated case files for Patient 4479 yet?”

Doctor Eddows never called J by name. Harley couldn't help but see it as a weakness.

“Right here,” she fished them from under the paperwork, “I was just about to bring them down to your office.”

Lies. She’d been sitting on them for over a week with no intention of handing them over, even if she couldn’t quite admit  _ why  _ to herself.

That in some small way it felt like a betrayal.

And besides, J went _way_ beyond their forms and boxes, even further than the other patients, he could never be condensed down to a marker on a chart. 

It would be like trying to diagnose a tornado.

Harley hesitated as she handed the file over, mind racing a mile a minute. Maybe it was time to address her problems with the system head on, to calmly and firmly make her case. That way she could finally prove her worth, she could help bring the Asylum into a new era of mental healthcare.

She could be taken seriously.

“Although... I have to say I have some concerns.”

Elizabeth expression went from affable to alert in a split second, “has he become violent again? I can increase-“

“No no,” her eyes widened, waving her hands as she cut Elizabeth off, “his behaviour has been… exemplary.” Harley winced at the less than accurate word choice but powered on, “My concern is rather about our methods of treating him. I feel as if we’re trying to fit him into a category that wasn’t meant for him, whatever his problems are… they can’t be defined by our current boundaries.”

She held her breath, heart thumping as she silently congratulated herself for the little speech, already preparing her suggestions for how to fix the system as Elizabeth looked at her seriously.

Then Elizabeth snorted, her shoulders relaxing as she took the file from Harley, tucking it neatly under her arm.

“You make him sound so grand,” the older doctor scoffed, shaking her head indulgently, “he’s a classic ego-maniacal thrill killer murdering for personal gratification, just like the rest of them. You’ll understand that when you’ve been here longer, Harley.”

Her heart plummeted, a tortoise dropped by an bird and left to smash on the rocks below as her supervisor shut her down completely. Her jaw clenched shut, teeth clacking against a dozen sharp replies as a familiar wave of anger surged through her. Rage that this woman had dared to belittle her so easily in her own damned office. That she wouldn't even  _listen._

“I don’t see what my tenure has to do with it,” Harley said as cooly as she could, determined not to show a reaction as she made her point. “And I think you can agree I’ve had more success with Mister J than most of his previous carers.”

She  _ had.  _ She’d gotten things they couldn’t  _ dream  _ of. His childhood, his stories, he’d told it to  _ her  _ not them. It was professional jealousy, it had to be, that was why Elizabeth was already preparing to shrug her off again.

She could see it in her eyes.

“Hmm perhaps,” Elizabeth said with no feeling whatsoever, proving Harley a hundred percent right as her gaze became distracted, “Oh! Have you heard about the fundraiser yet? It’s not been officially announced but I just got it from the board, it’s not for a couple of months but it should be a lot of fun. The Wayne foundations hosting so at least there’ll be a free bar.”

Dismissed. She’d been utterly dismissed. Like she didn’t even matter.

Like she was just another dumb blonde who had tricked her way into a position she didn’t deserve.

Harley’s jaw ached as she flashed her teeth in a hard smile.

“I hadn’t heard about it.” was all she said.

“You’ll get the official invitation in a couple of weeks,” Elizabeth smiled breezily as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t just gutted Harley where she stood, “Don’t stay here too late now!” she added as she turned for the door “a young girl like you should be getting out there, enjoying the city!”

It took everything she had to hold her temper until the door had shut and she was certain she was alone again. 

She inhaled sharply in the silence as it hit her all at once.  A white-hot flash of anger that seemed to singe the skin from her bones as she lashed out, fist pounding into the desk and sending her paperwork flying. 

It snowed down around her as she laughed bitterly, cradling her hand to her chest as the pain began to throb. Red blossomed against her skin where she’d caught the sharp edge of the desk.

_ Classic _ .

Sucking in a breath she forced herself to straighten up, to face herself in the reflection of the glass on her certificates.  _ It wasn’t her fault. _ None of them this was. 

It was Doctor Eddows. 

She was the one who didn’t understand, who  _ couldn’t  _ understand most likely. The whole faculty was so consumed with their rules and regulations they couldn’t see the obvious. That the only way to make a difference with their patients would be to stop trying to cram them into boxes they were never meant to fit into and start  _ listening  _ to them instead. Talk to them as human beings and not… not  _ experiments.  _

Harley would be better than them, she had to be.

Pulling Ivy’s request from the pile she sat at her desk again. She had work to do.

 

—-

 

He’d been waiting, the endless crawl of solitary confinement finally easing as the goon squad showed up to escort him to his tri-weekly date with the doc. Anticipation bopped like a tune in his head as he made the familiar march, it had been too long. Always too long. But she was here now and he could get back to having  _ fun. _

Or not.

His excitement fell away all at once, dropped like a cape as his expression turned dark.

“You hurt your hand.” 

The words were flat, shot out the second the door shut as something dark flexed inside him. Something spiny and sharp, like a sea anemone on steroids as she looked down at the bandage like she hadn’t even realised it was there.

“It was an accident,” she said, voice pitched far too low for his liking. 

“What  _ kind  _ of accident?” 

If someone had  _ touched _ her… The spiny thing became a shark. Black rage clenching his fists as he fixed every scrap of attention on her, daring her to lie to him. There was one person and one person alone allowed to scar his Harley girl and that was  _ him. _

“I,” embarrassment flickered in her eyes, cheeks stained pink as she sighed, “I got mad at a table.”

Exhaling, he let some of the tension ease from his shoulders as he eyed her up, “That was pretty fucking stupid.”

Harley laughed, a rough snort as she fiddled with the edge of the dressing, “yeah, it was.”

“You gonna tell me what the table did to deserve it?” He jiggled his cuffs, toying with the silver metal as something dark passed over her features. A rage that made his ribs tingle. 

She might tell him, he thought, if she saw it as another of her trust exercises. A  _ dialogue _ she’d called it once. 

She could justify it however she wanted, he knew the truth. She  _ wanted  _ to talk to him. Still so desperate to be understood, to  _ connect _ . And he was more than willing to listen.

Uncertainty washed over her features, brow creasing as she glanced at the bandage again. So small, so  _ unsure  _ it was easy to forget which one of them was being kept in the isolation ward. But then she was sighing, nose scrunching up in a look of such disdain it made him giggle. 

“It questioned my professional opinion and then belittled me in my own office.”

Better, much better. He relaxed, letting the warm thrum of anticipation soak back into his skin as he leant back in his chair with a smile.

“Jeez, that’s a real bitch of a table,” He chuckled and she blushed again, her gaze darting away and back again like her eyes were on a string, “You gotta get a better coping mechanism than that kiddo, punching furniture ain’t the way to go about it.”

People maybe. Buildings with dynamite perhaps… 

“Oh yeah?” She looked bemused, amused, all those good things, pulling his attention back as she discarded any pretence at working on her notes entirely, “like what?”

“What did ya used to do as a kid?” he folded his hands behind his head, “To blow off steam? And don’t give me that ‘perfect childhood’ crap, this is  _ me _ you’re talking to remember.”

He knew all her secrets, seen all her scars, and they both knew it.

She ran a finger along the edge of the table, curiosity back in those baby blues of hers. Looking right through him. “What did  _ you _  used to do?”

Hmm a genuine question or was she trying to get all doctor Barbie on him, deflecting again? Either way he had to give a little to get a little.

And he wanted a whole lot more than a little.

“The usual messed up preteen hijinx,” he shrugged, “pulling the wings off flies, sneaking into the dancers tents when they were  _ uh  _ changing, messing with the ropes backstage at the big top for kicks.”

_Hoping someone would fall._  

“Yours is more exotic than mine,” She snorted, pulling her glasses off and massaging the bridge of her nose, that sweet chewed up accent sneaking back into her voice just for a second, “I just used to shoplift lipsticks and hang out on the overpass throwing pebbles at cars.”

Ooooh that  _ spoke  _ to him. 

The image bright in his mind, a childish reflection of his own  _ raison d'etre. _ What was more chaotic than a stone hurled at random through a windshield? No politics, no profiling, just chance and destruction in their purest, most beautiful forms.

“That’s what we are when it comes right down to it, huh Harls?” He said, something he couldn’t quite identify teasing at him as she met his gaze, something… _subtle._ __ H e wasn't used to subtle.  “Just a couple of kids tossing rocks off a bridge to see what happens.”

Her cherry red lips parted, a perfect o of surprise as something in her eyes flickered. Understanding maybe.  That connection she so desperately wanted snapping tight between them for a moment, a tightrope he was itching to push her off of, to snatch her up in his hands and…

And she was looking away again. Picking her glasses back up from the table and shutting the expression away as if nothing had happened. 

“Maybe,” she cleared her throat, “anyway - I thought today maybe we could talk about the other patients at the asylum? What do you think of them, Mister J?”

He missed the way she used to say it. The way she used to speak. All nasal and squeaky and squished.  _ Mistah Jay.  _ A siren’s song in a Brooklyn accent, if he decided to keep her long term he’d have to knock that back into her for sure.

“They’re… alright.” He shrugged, willing to play along for now at least as he leaned his chair back on two legs, “A bit uninspired though, ya know? Obsessed with the same things,” he waved his hands, “Money, revenge, sex, power, none of them get the  _ big picture.” _

_ “ _ ”The big picture?” she made a note on her page, incomprehensible as always.

“Yeah,” he landed his chair back on the ground with a thump, leaning forward instead as the thoughts danced for him, disdain for his fellow crazies turning them distant, “the thing they don’t get, that no one does really, is that it’s not about that all. Not even a little bit. They don’t see the  _ real _ goal _... _ ”

“Chaos,” she murmured, nodding her head. Another scribble on the page as he fell stone silent, ears ringing in sudden hush.

“What was that Harley?” He asked, dangerously quiet as she looked up in surprise.

“Chaos?” She repeated, doe-eyed and startled, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, “that’s what you were going to say wasn’t it?” She looked back at her notes like the answer might be there somewhere.

“What makes you think that?” He kept his voice casual, two friends having a  _ chat,  _ but he couldn’t help but tip forward in his chair, metal screeching against stone as he pressed himself in close.

“Well - it’s the true equaliser, right?” she tapped her pen against the edge of her clipboard, something far far away in her gaze as she considered it, “the other patients, while deviating from the norm, still do so within the set parameters of the system. Your vision goes beyond that, beyond the idea that the system exists at all. The only way to truly beat it is to be free from it.”

His breath left him in a rush, vicious heat twisting his smile with the taste of victory. He'd done even better than he'd thought with her, he'd shown her the  _true_ path, the thing no one else seemed capable of grasping.

Oh yeah, she was worth the effort all right. 

Harley… Harley was  _ keeper. _


	7. Wildest Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's amazing what a little walk in Gotham can do to clear your head...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Already gang I'm thinking of doing something crazy (gettin' in the Arkham spirit right? :-P) and trying to finish/post this whole damn fic before the next episode comes out (7 chapters in 6 days) If only because I'm 99% sure the next ep is gonna take this series from 'kinda AU' to full blown 'not even slightly in canon' territory - whattaya think? Sound off in the comments and let me know if you're game or if you'd prefer a more leisurely, considered ride! <3
> 
> Anyway! Now back to our regularly scheduled madness...

 

The interview room seemed smaller than usual, off kilter as Harley squinted around the stone walls.

How had she gotten here?

And why the hell was J wearing her glasses?

“Hmm so, Ms H,” he looked calmer than she ever remembered seeing him before, almost  _ ordinary  _ as he perused the notepad in front of him, “how are you feeling today?”

She frowned, moving to snatch back her notes and gasping as her arms jerked in their sockets. How had she not noticed before now? Her wrists were trapped behind her back, cold metal hanging heavy off her bones.

“What’s going on?” She asked, struggling against her restraints, “I’m the doctor here.”

J gave her a serious look, sympathetic but distant, “delusions of grandeur are very common with patients in your situation.”

He looked  _ wrong.  _ Watered down without that spark of madness in his blue green eyes, she didn’t realise how much she missed it until it was gone. That fire. That  _ intensity. _

_ “ _ What are you talking about Mistah J?” Her voice caught in her throat, coming out shakily as he rose from his chair, working his way around the table with a slow measured step. He was wearing a white doctor’s coat she realised now, and she… she was in stripes _. Arkham _ stripes. Her mouth dried, stomach twisting as she struggled to make sense of it.

“ _ Doctor Valeska,”  _ He corrected, almost sadly as he stopped in front of her, “I thought we’d gotten past this phase of denial, Ms H, your condition must be getting worse…”

“What condition?” She croaked as he leant over her chair, drawing so close she could feel the white cotton of his coat against her neck. His breath against her skin.

“You don’t know?” He murmured, pushing his glasses up his nose before leaning closer still. The fire sparked, madness igniting in his gaze and sending her heart shuddering inside her chest. A thrill fear reaction as he pressed into her, so close that when he spoke next his mouth brushed hers, branding her with each hushed word, “it’s simple, Harley Girl. You’re totally... and completely…  _ mad.” _

A shrill noise pierced the air, a warning klaxon that had her chair tipping backwards, falling falling -  _ thud! _

Harley woke with a snort, her phone screaming on the bedside table as she flopped around in the sheets, trying to reconnect with reality as the dream danced behind her eyes.

His mouth...

Her hand found cold plastic and she was back in the moment, flipping it open with a struggle, “‘Lo?” 

“Harleen hey -” a bright voice sang down the line, forcing her to stifle a groan, “I didn’t wake you did I? It’s me by the way, Laurie.”

She definitely wasn’t dreaming now. 

“Nope,” she lied through her teeth, pulling herself upright as she faked a smile, “What can I do for you, sis?”

Much  _ older  _ sis. Who apparently didn’t care that they hadn’t spoken in a year or that it was 6am in the frickin morning in Gotham. 

“I knows it not for a couple of months yet but I was thinking maybe we should have Hanukkah at my house this year? Get everyone together, y’know?”

Her house. On the other side of the country.

“Maybe,” Harley rubbed her temples, a headache already brewing at the no-win conversation she’d fallen into, “I’m not sure what my schedule will be like yet…”

“Come on Harleen,” Laurie whined, “we haven’t seen you in years! It’ll be great!”

Harley bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood, keeping her mouth shut against the fact that the  _ reason _ Laurie hadn’t seen her in years was because she’d left home when Harley was six. Because she’d abandoned her to their parents, even though she knew exactly what they were like. 

Not that Harley was still bitter about it of course, nope, not at all.

And she  _ had  _ let Harley crash on her couch that first summer she’d moved back to New York she supposed, that had been a nice gesture. Even if Laurie had complained non-stop in that singularly passive-aggressive way of hers that she didn’t have her own place yet.

How Laurie had never had someone to fall back on like she did.

_ No win, remember?  _ She reminded herself with a sigh.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she nodded, giving into the inevitable and submitting peacefully as Laurie launched into a one sided conversation, making interested noises when it was required of her.

Not once Laurie ask about her new job though, her new  _ life _ , if she’d been confronted by the man who’d  _ kidnapped  _ her all those years ago. Nope, instead it was all about Laurie and her perfect life and kids and  _ husband.  _ All the things Harley was lacking in her eyes.

Speaking of...

“I’d put Caleb on but I can’t seem to find him-“ Laurie sighed theatrically, smugness radiating through the line.

“Just follow the sounds of clown porn and crying,” Harley muttered, thanking whoever was looking out for her that she wouldn’t have to spend an excruciating five minutes making conversation with her jerk off brother in law.

“ _ Harleen!” _

Oh shit, had she said that aloud?!

“Heh just kidding!” She covered as quickly as she could.

“Well it wasn’t funny!” Laurie's voice turned shrill, a kettle-whistle screech of disapproval. 

Harley winced, rolling her eyes even as she made conciliatory noises.

It was too damn early for this.

Besides,  _ she _ wasn’t the one who’d been caught making out with a children’s entertainer at her kids 3rd birthday party. Why Laurie stayed with him after that was a mystery, maybe he was the only one willing to put up with her.

Harley snorted, or maybe clown fucking was contagious.

Her dreams resurfaced, hazy and intoxicating. J, her, the taste of his scars against her lips… she shuddered despite herself. Slamming back the thought she scrambled to end the call, hanging up the phone as soon as she could with a half hearted promise to  _ try  _ and make it down over the holidays.

A promise she had no intention of keeping.

Her nieces and nephews were a riot but a week of Laurie’s disapproval was more than any girl could stand, not without developing a drinking problem.

Staring blankly at the clock she hunched her shoulders with a sigh, she was up now. She might as well do something productive with her extra hours.

Dragging herself from bed, she stumbled around the piles of clothing on her floor until she found some leggings. Digging her running shoes from under the bed she shoved them on, it was always a good idea to keep in shape when you worked at an asylum for the criminally insane after all.

The cold air hit shocked her as she hit the sidewalk, knocking the thoughts from her head as she ran, breath billowing in front of her. Autumn didn’t seem to last long in Gotham, wintery weather already closing like a vice around the city. 

At least she wasn’t the only one braving the cold. There was another early riser rounding the corner at the end of the block, haggard looking as she was dragged behind two hulking dobermans. Harley’s heart squeezed painfully, guilt sloshing through her as she watched them.

From this distance they could almost be Bud and Lou. She let herself imagine it as regret jarred through her bones with each footfall, wishing once more she’d found a way to take them with her. She’d kept an eye on the Gotham shelters for a while in case they showed up but… but nothing. And after what J had said…

She didn’t think he’d  _ actually _ eaten them, that part was just his sick sense of humour, but without someone to remind him to feed them... Without  _ her  _ around, she knew they were probably gone by now.

Dead or missing or forgotten. With another mob maybe, or at the bottom of a river.

Heat burnt behind her eyes, sniffing hard as they came closer into view. She let herself pretend it was them, just for a moment, that they were  _ happy. _ They had the same markings after all, and the one on the left was even missing part of his ear, the one on the right…

She stopped so suddenly she stumbled, over balancing on her toes as her heart tried to keep on running. It ricocheted around in her chest, throat locked tight as her gaze travelled over the scarred dogs to the rail thin woman behind them, her face tired and ever so familiar.

“Laney?” The name fell in a whisper, disbelief forming like a lump in her throat as the woman met her gaze, frowning at her before a spark of recognition lit their depths.

“ _ Harley?” _

Oh God it was them. It was  _ them.  _ They were alive!

Harley was moving before she realised it, running to the overgrown puppies as tears scalded down her cheeks. Her old acquaintance forgotten completely as she held her hands out, long forgotten czech phrases falling out of her lips as the dogs jumped at her. A rough tongue scraping her cheek as she threw her arms around them. 

“Bud baby, Louie, I missed you so much,” she mumbled thickly as they barked at her, “I thought - it don’t matter, did you miss me? Did you? I missed you babies I missed you so much.”

Someone cleared their throat and she remembered herself, suddenly seventeen again as she jerked unsteadily to her feet, dashing at her eyes awkwardly. Laney looked older than she remembered, black eyes set deep in the hollows of her face as she stared at her like she’d seen a ghost.

Maybe she had.

Harley swallowed hard. 

“What are you doing here, Harley?” Laney asked, fresh creases cutting her face as she frowned.

“I… I live in this neighbourhood.” Dumb thing to say but technically true, her heart stuttering over itself as a soft, scarred muzzle was pushed into her palm. Petting at her dogs like no time had past even if she couldn’t look away from her forgotten… friend? Had Laney been a friend?

The closest thing she’d had to one maybe during that month. Apart from  _ him. _

“You left.” 

The words slapped her, a flat fact that landed right between her ribs. Guilt suddenly swimming in her veins. 

“I had too,” she said, even if the words sounded woefully inadequate to her own ears. “Do you still work for…”

“Of course,” Laney snorted, eyes rolling at Harley’s stupidity. But then something in her face brightened, that same pin madness she saw so often in J, “Did you come back for him? Have you seen him?”

They didn’t have to qualify  _ who.  _ There could only ever be one.

“I… I’ve seen him,” the words slipped out without her permission, “I work at Arkham now.”

Laney’s attention flared, lighting up her face as she leant in close, “that’s _p_ _ erfect!  _ Can you give him a message?”

She shouldn’t, it was against protocol and she shouldn’t be making promises to a known criminal associate of his. She should be calling the cops.

Instead she nodded, “Sure.”

“Tell him -” Laney’s hand tightened on her arm, broken nails clenched hard enough to hurt - “Tell him someone’s been in his makeup and the party’s being spoilt.”

“I... okay” Harley nodded as she gently pried Laney’s hand loose, apprehension worming beneath her skin at the intensity in the hench woman’s eyes. “We have a session tomorrow, I’ll tell him for you.”

“Thanks Harley!” Laney beamed, her thin face transformed into something beautiful and sinister, “I guess I should be going, it was really good to see you again.”

“You too,” she whispered, meaning it completely as she ruffled Lou’s ears again and Bud licked at her other palm, “and thank you… for taking care of them.”

“It’s no problem,” Laney grinned, fumbling for a scrap of paper in her bag, “I’ll look after them until you come back! Here’s my number if you wanna stop by the new hideout sometime and check in. Share your plans and all.”

“Oh-” she didn’t know what to say to that, clutching the crumpled number close to her chest, “oh okay then. See ya round…”

Laney was already gone, waving cheerily as she was dragged away by the dogs, leaving Harley in the middle of the sidewalk. A cold wind swept around her, sending her hair whipping into her eyes as she watched them disappear into the distance, an old wound reopened.

Or healed.

She wasn’t sure anymore.

All she knew was that suddenly she was alone again.  
  


\---

 

“I saw Laney yesterday.”

She wasn’t going to say anything, really she wasn’t. But there were the words, marching off her tongue like soldiers to war as his head snapped up to look at her.

“Who?”

She swallowed the knee-jerk rush of irritation at his flippant reply, “Laney? Tall, thin angry looking woman. Works for you.”

“Oh!” his eyes widened in realisation, grin stretching as he cocked his head at her, “ _ Laney,  _ jeez why didn’t you say so! Same country club?”

“No,” She said, words unforgivably quiet. “She was out in my neighbourhood... walking the dogs.”

His eyes flickered, the smallest twitch in his expression as she watched. Breath drawn as he considered her.

“You made me think they’d died,” she couldn’t stop herself, tears welling behind her eyes again, “but you kept them.”

“Yeah well,” he shrugged, manic energy fading as his gaze darted away, “I figured I’d keep ‘em around until you came back.”

That hurt, the quiet words slicing into her every vulnerability. He’d waited. He’d kept them and cared for them and…

And she’d never come back. 

“Thank you.” She whispered, suddenly fascinated by the back of her hands. Trying to count out the beats of her heart to keep from crying.

When she raised her head he was looking right at her. He wasn’t smiling now, no flippant grin or laughing comment. Instead he just stared into her, something so still and steady in his gaze it made her ribs ache.

“You’re welcome.”

Oh God. Oh God she was slipping and she knew it.

He’d  _ kept  _ the dogs, he’d looked after them for all those years. He’d  _ waited. _

“Hey Harls?” She hadn’t registered him moving but he had, suddenly perched on the edge of the table beside her. His hands in his lap as he looked at her from under his lashes, “it wasn’t all bad was it? We had some good times… didn’t we?”

She couldn’t speak, words all tangled up inside her as she stared into the abyss of his eyes and remembered it all. The murder and mayhem sure, but the  _ other  _ times as well, the ones she’d fought just as hard to repress.

The long nights watching old movies, the late dinners, the laughter, how  _ powerful  _ she’d felt when he’d shook her up and set her loose on the world. When he kissed her...

She swallowed hard and nodded, “yeah… I guess we did.”

Metal clinked softly as he raised his hands, tipping her chin up so she was looking at him face on. She fought the urge to press her cheek into his palm, to lose herself in the simple contact he offered as he assessed her with his eyes.

“I missed you kiddo.”

_ It’s trap, _ her mind screamed at her,  _ he’s manipulating you again you idiot.  _

It was. She knew it. A ploy, a game, a trick.

A doll he could pick up and put down as we willed. A breakable  _ thing _ .

So why was her heart racing so hard, why did she find her eyes wet with unshed tears behind her glasses. Why oh why did she whisper, “I missed you too, Mistah J,” in that chewed up Brooklyn accent she’d spent so long erasing.

 

—

 

This was it!

He could feel it tingling all the way down to the soles of his feet, the warm glow of  _ victory.  _ Satisfying and seductive as her voice grew small and her eyes grew big and that accent of hers played like music in his ears.

One careful brush of contact now, a gentle word, a sign of affection, and he’d have her hook line and sinker. He could read her like a book, the kind for kids and special people with the big text and lotsa pictures, she was so desperate for someone to  _ understand  _ her she couldn’t even see it herself.

And no one would ever understand her like he could.

Now he just to seal the deal and it would be laughter and slaughter until sundown!

Her expression changed before he could make his move, brow crinkling ever so slightly as she blinked owlishly at him.

“Oh - I almost forgot,” she murmured, “Laney asked me to give you a message…”

“What’s that, Harley girl?” he smiled indulgently, brushing his fingers gently along the curve of her jaw as he pictured the escapades to come. She'd become a magnificent nightmare under his hands, the perfect bad taste joke. Doctor to Danger in four months or less.

“She said…” her frown deepened, gaze flicking back and forth as she worked to remember it, “she said something like… someone was in your makeup? That they were spoiling the party? I don’t-  _ ow!” _

His fingers clenched around her jaw, hard enough to bruise as anger rose up inside him like a wave. He let her go when she jerked away, too furious to care.

His skin felt too tight.

A balloon stretched around a seething mass of rage, ready to burst at any minute. Violently.

_ Someone was in his makeup. _

The fucking  _ nerve. _

He kicked away from the table, prowling the edge of the room as heat pulsed through him. Brain darting around like a ball bearing in a pinball machine as he replayed Harley’s words.

“Who?” He turned sharply back to her, “who is it?”

“Who is  _ who? _ ” she asked, off balance and irritating as he clenched his fists. Cuffs straining against his wrists as he flexed against them. “What does it mean?”

What a pretty little  _ idiot. _

“It means,” he said, eyes hard as glass and just as cutting, “that someone’s been stealing my  _ act _ . Someone’s been  _ fucking things up. _ ”

“Oh,” she blinked stupidly, watching him pace away.

God, did he have to do  _ everything  _ himself? A couple of months in the nuthouse and the whole city was going to shit and she didn’t even  _ realize  _ it. 

Pretty pretty little  _ IDIOT. _

“God Harls, don’t you ever read a newspaper?” He snapped angrily, his good mood gone with the wind, “you’re supposed to be the  _ smart  _ one aren’t you?”

He saw her deflate, her breath leaving her in a rush as a small wave of satisfaction flooded through him. A reminder that here at least he had  _ power. _

He was in control.

Then her chin was rising defiantly, still cherry red where he’d gripped it, her eyes watery behind her glasses as she folded away her notes and got to her feet.

“I think that’s enough for today,” she said, a picture perfect imitation of calm as he watched her, cutting her apart with his eyes and being rewarded for the effort. She wilted ever so slightly, fingers trembling as she pushed at her glasses, “But- but I’ll look into this matter for you for our next session.”

Sure she would.

He just had to figure if he had the patience to  _wait._


	8. Delicate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's officially half-past half-time and everyone is ever so predictably falling apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two days two chapters and I'm already one step closer to the edge! (letshopei'mnotabouttabreak)  
> ANYWAY! I hope it's legible and y'all enjoy it, as always your comments (and enough caffeine to fell a moose) are the only things that keep me writing! <3

 

The look he’d given her followed her for the rest of the day.

Razor sharp and judgemental, like he was daring her to prove she wasn’t the idiot she looked like. The idiot everyone had always assumed she was.

All they’d ever seen was the front, the  _mask,_  blonde hair and bright smiles. Someone sweet, someone ever so easy to disregard no matter how hard she worked to get their attention. 

No matter what she did to try and prove she was more than just a pretty face.

No one had even seen through it, not really, no one had thought that she might just be special. That she might just be _more_ than what they thought.

Well… almost no one.

Guilt crawled uneasily beneath her skin, a hollowness in the pit of her stomach as she remembered how J used to look at her. Like he still did sometimes. Like she could be something to be reckoned with _._

Something _powerful._

The feeling shadowed her, still off balance and unsure of herself hours later, shame flushing her ribs as she stopped by the newscart on the way home. Just for a look, she told herself, just to try and  _ understand. _

_ New Clown in Town! Gotham on High Alert after ‘Jester’ Causes Widespread Panic _

Oh. 

Oh  _ shit. _

J was right. 

She swallowed hard, the headline beating her around the head as she snatched up the newspaper. She’d been so swept up in life at the Asylum she hadn’t had a chance to check in to reality in  _ weeks _ . She hadn’t even known...

Passing a couple of bucks to the vendor she half jogged home, nearly bumping into three lampposts and a man walking his dog as she devoured the article. Everything became clearer and clearer with each word, falling into razor sharp focus when her eyes fell on it picture. It was  _ wrong,  _ a grainy black and white image that made her stomach clench with anger. The man’s face was white, a mask it looked like, emotionless with black spaces for eyes and a big painted on smile.

A pale imitation of the reports she’d seen on J.

She rubbed at her jaw distractedly, no wonder he’d been so annoyed. He had every right to be, and she... she  _had_ been an absolute idiot, just for that moment at least, totally ignorant of the fact that someone was ripping him off - and  _ badly! _

No wonder he’d been so disappointed in her, she was better than that!

“What a schmuck,” she mumbled to herself, pouring a glass of wine and dropping down at her over crowded table to reread the article as her heart beat an unsteady tattoo in her chest.

The ‘ _ Jester _ ’ as he styled himself had been bombing costume stores and party planning businesses, taunting messages mailed to the police after each attack.

A bomber huh, detached then. No history of face to face killings, no thievery, no  _ style.  _ An anonymous face on a screen with delusions of grandeur.

A copycat and a coward.

Swirling the wine in her glass she took off her glasses, dropping them to the side as she settled down to look at this properly. She’d taken criminal profiling courses alongside everything else, certain they’d be a help when psychoanalyzing dangerous patients.  She just had to look at this like another one of Doctor Irving’s assignments.

Okay so... non-confrontational, copycat, but skilled - he’d have to be to craft the bombs. He had a need for attention, obviously, unless… unless it was all an  _ act.  _ If he was covering his real motive with the mask then that could explain the weak showmanship and obvious choice of disguise. Not to mention why he only sent the videos  _ afterwards,  _ when there was no chance of being caught.

_ But then… _ she scrabbled around in her bag for a pen, turning over her unpaid water bill and making careful notes, _it would be the_ _ victims.  _ That’s where she’d find the link, one of them knew him. The first three bombs had been in the same area of Gotham it seemed, the next two more widely placed as he got more confident.

Those first ones. They’d be close to his home, he’d need to feel confident, secure. He probably lived nearby...

Wait… what the hell was she doing?

She pulled back, unsettled as she blinked at the page of scribbled notes. This was none of her business, it was the  _ polices.  _ It had nothing to do with her whatsoever.

Nothing except… except it had hurt J. She’d seen the fury in his face, felt it as his grip turned painful against her jaw. Waking her up from the spell she’d fallen under as he’d drawn her in close… as she’d…

Nope. Nope.  _ No.  _ None of her business.

Besides, what was she imagining she’d do with the information? March into the Asylum and slap it down on the interview room table to prove that she was  _ worthy _ somehow. That he hadn’t been wrong about her.

She’d be finding one criminal just to tell another, enabling J... he'd probably just break out and kill him himself.  Something vicious twisted in her chest at the thought, so sudden it left her breathless, a cold stab that felt like  _ justice.  _ A tiny little part of her that almost _wanted_ to see what Mistah J would do…

It was sure to be original if nothing else.

No.

That wasn’t her and this wasn’t her business.

She should put it down, step away, get some sleep. God only knew she needed it.

But… but maybe it would be the  _ right _ thing to do, wouldn’t it? To put her smarts towards figuring out who this  _ Jester  _ character was anyway?

Not to tell J of course, but the  _ police.  _ She could help the investigation  _ and  _ get a dangerous criminal off the streets and into psychiatric care where he belonged. And well, if she  _ happened  _ to mention it to J afterwards that wouldn’t really be so bad, would it? Maybe he’d be able to get back on track in their sessions once he knew the imposter was in custody and his reputation was safe.

Nodding to herself she poured another glass of wine and cracked her knuckles, determined to get to the bottom of it.

 

\---

 

All police stations smelt the same in her experience. Stale coffee, disinfectant and piss. The scent hot-wired into her brain with memories of picking up her dad the times her mom had been able and willing to make bail.

Gotham PD was no different.

At least she didn’t think it was until a tired man was stepping up to her in the waiting room, the shiny badge on his chest marking him as ‘ _ commissioner’.  _ She really was getting the royal treatment. 

“Doctor Quinzel?” He asked, reaching out to shake her hand when she nodded, “thank you for coming down and talking to us today. I know you must be busy. I’m Jim Gordon the… uh… Commissioner.”

His mouth twitched wanly, like he was still getting used to the title, his moustache jumping with it. Graying prematurely, like the rest of him, like he’d been rode hard and put up wet.

“A pleasure Commissioner,” she smiled, taking the seat he offered her across his desk and smoothing her palms over her skirt, “and please - I don’t have any patients until noon today and I wanted to do anything I could to help.”

_ Kinda _ , she added silently. Her first thought  _ had _ been to tell her murderous ex-whatever-he-was and let him take it out of the Jester in flesh after all. But it was the  _ second  _ thought that mattered, isn’t that what they always said?

“You work at Arkham, right?” Gordan’s eyes crinkled kindly, “God you’re all getting younger and younger by the day, I swear.” Shaking his head he opened his files, “now - what was it you told my deputy?”

Clearing her throat she tried her best to look professional, something about his calm blue gaze made her want to squirm in her seat. Like a naughty child faced with a disappointed principal, just waiting for her to confess her crimes.

“Well, I looked over the case in my spare time - I have some experience with the criminal mind after all,” she smiled demurely, determined to put her best foot forward, “and there were a couple of things that stood out to me-”

Pulling a crisply typed file from her purse she laid her notes out for him, detailing her theory that the suspect lived in the vicinity of the first three bombings and had a personal grudge against at least one of the targets - in her mind, the chain store ‘Shirts and Giggles’, two of whose stores had been taken out in the blasts. A short search had come up with a name, an independent costumier who’s shop had been on the same street until he was put out of business.

“...by, you guessed it, Shirts and Giggles. His experience with prop making and detail work gives him the fine motor skills needed for these bombs and well… as you can see he has he probably has a grudge.”

“So you think the other bombings are to cover up his true motivation?” Gordon rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, he seemed to be taking her seriously at least. And, whilst looking a little surprised, he wasn’t outright gawping that she was the one who’d come up with it, “It’s not an avenue we’ve investigated yet, criminals tend to be less logical these days when they put on the get up,” he gestured vaguely, “an old fashioned grudge match huh -  _ O’Brian! _ -”

Harley bit back a smile as he instructed a deputy to look into it. Pride blossoming in her chest at how seriously her work was being taken.

“Do you mind if we keep these notes Doctor Quinzel? They’re very impressive,” she nodded warmly as he thumbed through them again, “y'know if you ever want a change in career just say the word.”

“Call me Harley, please,” she beamed, “And thank you, really, but I think I’m okay where I am for the moment”

Life without the Asylum suddenly seemed unendurabley grey. She didn’t let herself think about it too hard, focusing her attention on the Commissioner again. He smiled, a tired kindly expression that had seen too many things and yet somehow still hoped for better.

He was one of the good ones, she could tell.

“Well if you change your mind.” His expression flickered, brow creasing as he did a double take, “Say… have we met before, Harley? I’m getting the weirdest feeling of deja vu right now.”

Her smile froze, fixed through instinct alone as she dragged her gaze over him with fresh eyes.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

She _ did  _ know him.

They’d met before, eight long years before, back when he was just a tired detective and she was a trauma victim escaping a dangerous situation.

He’d been the one to talk her down, to drag her back from the edge she was ready to swan dive off of after the  _ incident  _ with Jerome. 

Heart stuttering in her chest, she swallowed hard, trying to drag herself back to the moment as her brain turned teenage again. Another unfortunate little coincidence that had her wincing inside, had her forcing herself to remember she was a medical professional now.

“I don’t think so,” she managed to say, smile painfully tight as she gathered up her purse, “thanks for your time Commissioner, and good luck with the case.”

“No no,” he rose, hurrying to open the door for her, “thank you, you’ve been a lot of help really.”

The meeting sat strangely with her all the way into work. Chewing at the back of her mind as she kept an eye on the news that day and into the next. First J, then Laney, now Gordon.

It was like fate was trying to tell her something, she just wasn't sure she wanted to listen or not.

 

—-

 

Angry.

Furious.

Incensed.

Wrathful.

Each word bounced around his skull in time with his pacing, three lengths of his cell and he would have traded his left leg for a goddamn dictionary just so he could adequately express how abso-fucking-luteley  _ livid  _ he was.

Angry. He was angry. That was it. That was all. Pure rage in a skin suit and in striped shirt as he worked back and forth across the room. The newspaper he’d scrounged the day of the  _ message  _ had long since been shredded, only the face in the centre untouched. The masked, grinning, pale imitation of his own glaring back at him from the wall of his cell.

He was a  _ knock off. _

And a shoddy one that that.

J snorted, this Jester character probably had ‘ _ made in taiwan’  _ tattooed on his ass.  _ Misspelled. _

But the real kicker, the nut busting bastard of it all, was that for some unknown reason J was still in Arkham.

What the fricking fracking fuck was he doing?!

He should be out there in the big wide world, mining his grubby little underworld contacts for the imposter's location and then exercising his frustration in the best and only way he knew how. 

With hammers. And nails. 

And lego pieces scattered liberally on the floor as he showed this idiot  _ exactly _ what it meant to try and rip off the Joker...

It would be so so easy too, he’d long since picked his escape routes, chosen the guards he could use and those he couldn't, Jeff, Mustache Guy, Marky Mark the Easy Mark. They were all prime candidates for bribery and blackmail and plain old fashioned  _ violence. _

So why was he still here?

_ Harley. _

The answer came in an angelic sing song, his fists clenched at his side as her face swam before his eyes. All picture perfect and dejected as she turned away from him.

Oh he was gonna kill the Jester all right. He was gonna cut off his balls and make him _eat_ _them_.

A growl rumbled through him, twisting his snarl into a smile. He’d gotten so damn close. Inches away from tying a little bow on his pet psycho, a silky ribbon to hang her with and this idiot had pulled it all loose again. 

Steeling himself he hauled in a rough breath, broken nails tearing into his palms as he fought the urge to lash out at the walls. One more session, he told himself, just one more. Just to make sure the seeds were properly planted before he broke out and moved the game up.

He couldn’t wreck it all now. No no no not again.

One more session.

It came frustratingly slow, an exercise in absolute self control as two days passed in a gray blur before he was being hauled back to the interview room.

“Good afternoon, Mistah J!” She was practically vibrating in her seat, a brightness to her smile that made his rage even darker in comparison.

He frowned, crossing his legs as he assessed her anew, the frustration inside of him cooling just enough to think through.

“Harrrrley.” He nodded, not saying another word as he waited for her to explain herself. His confusion rising up like the bridge of an eighties power ballad as she cleared her throats demurely. 

“I uh… I looked into that matter for you from our last session…” his attention piqued,  _ oh had she now,  _ “and, well, here…”

She produced a newspaper almost modestly, placing it in front of him with a papery thud. She couldn’t quite meet his gaze as he pulled it closer, his own eyes shooting wide as he read the headline.

_ Jester Caught! Insane Clown Bomber To Be Taken Arkham To Await Trial! _

_ That  _ then.

He scanned the article, his smile growing as the ramifications unfurled to him. Rage? What rage! He was overjoyed. Delighted.  _ Ecstatic.  _

A laugh started low in his gut, slow and heavy as it rose up like a monster from the deep. Like an inappropriate erection on a crowded bus.

They were taking the Jester to Arkham. To  _ him.  _ Fed-exing his spanky new nemesis right into his grubby clutches, just a few little stone walls sitting between him and sweet sweet revenge. 

Fate was literally delivering him into J’s lap.

No, no no no. Not fate.

_ Harley _ .

_ “Po-,”  _ he tried to read aloud, slapping his chest to stall the laughter when it threatened to choke him and spitting on the floor, “Sorry, ahem,  _ Po-leese say the capture would have taken much longer if had not been for the help of noooted Criminal Psychiatrist, Doctor Harleen Quinzel, who assisted with the investigation,”  _ his eyebrows skyrocketed, “My my my, that’s impressive, Harls!”

“It’s nothing,” she shrugged, downright glowing with pride. 

She should be proud, he was feeling proud too! An electric tingle shooting along the ridges of his spine as he drank in her bashful enthusiasm. He was even better than he thought, and hell - he’d be the first to admit he had a  _ bit  _ of an ego to start with. Just a lil. Okay a massive great conker of an ego. But still, he’d only had to drop a name and she’d delivered him  up in  _ days.  _ Just for him.

He’d done one helluva job on her!

“Don’t be so modest!” His grin turned sly, pulse rocketing in his ears as he wiggled forward in his seat, “you’re a star!”

A star who’d set up his revenge like a game of ten pin bowling where all the pins were rigged to fall no matter where the ball hit.

“So-” he edged closer, fixated by the spark in her gaze as an old hunger started rising up from his gut, let loose in the angers wake, “how’s it feel Harls?”

“How’s what feel?” Her smile turned puzzled, fingers tracing along the edge of the table as she looked up at him through her lashes. Too sweet suddenly, too  _ demure _ . Impatience snapped at the edges of his thoughts, jaw tensing as the hunger yawned. An old flame ignited.

_ “The chase _ ,” the fire licked higher, tasting the inside of his ribs as he watched her catch her breath,  _ better _ , “hunting down the crook, outsmarting the pigs? Tell me tell me tell me.” 

“Oh,” her face was flushed, he saw the shiver running through her, felt it in his own bones as she tipped her head forward, “it was… good to help, I suppose, satisfying.”

“Don’t be so modest Harley girl!” He half snarled half cheered reaching forward to snag her hand from the table, so small in his as he rubbed at her knuckles roughly, “you can’t tell anyone cos it’ll look like you’re bragging _right_? Like you got too big for your boots? Well not here, not _me_ , _so_ _spill_.”

He’d never tire of that blush, the surprised, vicious little twinkle in her eye as she met his. Co-conspiratorial and deliciously dark.

“It was  _ fantastic _ ,” she confided at last, hand clenched tight in his as her voice squeaked higher, spilling out all at once, “the clues were all right there and no one had even  _ noticed  _ it! The police were chasing their own tails but I could see it so clearly!”

“Why’d you go looking?” He asked lightening fast, drinking her in by the eye full.

“Because he was stealing your-“ she tripped over the words, realisation dawning on her features as she drew away. Pulling her hand from his as if he’d bitten her, which he hadn’t ruled out just yet, “b-because he was a threat to the city and himself, I wanted him to get help.”

Ah and there it was again, that big ol’ wall he was tryna knock through suddenly back in full force.

“Sure Harls,” he sighed, letting her retreat for now, slouching back in his chair as something pointy jabbed between his ribs. Sharp but not entirely unpleasant.

He could give her a little rope now.

He had time, she’d ensured that. Time to  _ enjoy  _ her properly, to break her,  _ liberate _ her, the way she deserved _.  _ A slow dance right off the edge of the cliff.

Noooo, patience wouldn’t be so hard now he’d seen the fractures in her facade. That sparkling madness glaring out from under it, the darkness,  _devotion_ _. _  Twisted but pure, an expression he'd never encountered before on his usual fruit loops.

He still wasn't  entirely sure he felt about that last little development, but that  was half the fun right? The excitement of the unknown!

He cracked his knuckles, mind already whirling away from him. He could deal with the Jester without breaking a sweat then  have a leisurely escape a few weeks from now when Harley was more firmly in his grasp.

In the mean time... well, they’d have plenty of time to play.

  
  
  



	9. How You Get The Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life imitates art, or something like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so I'm really really sorry but this looks like it's going to be the last chapter, I know it's a super unsatisfying end to the story but I realized recently that writing just isn't for me. I have to pursue my true passion and I really hope you can support me in it. So, as of today, there will be no more story, there won't be any wifi where I'm headed anyway - I'm gonna be moving to the Peruvian foothills soon to start my new career herding mountain goats. I really think it's where my future lies.
> 
> Come on be honest, I almost had you there didn't I? No? Oh well! To make up for my terrible joke here is the chapter I think we've *all* been waiting for, I know I have! Happy April Fools my friends, let's celebrate with styleeeeee ;-)

 

They were wheeling a stretcher out as she walked into work that morning, shoes clacking against the stone steps as it's rubber wheels squeaked and screeched. 

A body bag on it.

“Who?” She asked Jenny at the reception desk, brow raised as she signed in for her shift. Deaths weren't that uncommon in the Asylum after all, there'd been a couple of lower level patients who'd just come of suicide watch. She wondered which one had caved first.

“The clown,” the older woman rolled her eyes, gum snapping in her mouth, “he bit it last night.”

The pen fell from her fingers.

She couldn’t breathe.

_She couldn’t breathe._

“Gotta be a record,” Jenny sighed, “they only brought him in for those bombings a day ago. Harley? You okay, doc?”

Harley choked, lungs working again all at once as her heart sling shotted forward in her chest. “Th-the Jester?”

She had to know for sure _._

“Yeah,” Jenny took the clipboard back and handed Harley the mail from her pigeonhole, “Oh, did ya think I meant the _other_ one?" she snorted with laughter, "Sorry doc, I don’t think you’re getting out of work that easy! Even if we could all do with the day off… but look, the invitations have gone out for the fundraiser at least, even if it is short notice.”

“Ha, yeah,” she barely heard the words, barely registered the glossy invitation at the top of the pile as she grabbed the bundle of mail and headed for the security check, “yeah, bye now.”

She managed not to fall apart until she was safely in her office, ribs vice tight as she hunched over herself hyperventilating.

He was alive.

Oh God he was _alive._

He was alive and she was crying because the one moment she thought he wasn’t had been the worst in her life. Her insides _ached,_ face numb as tears scalded down it, as she choked on a stupid little laugh.

He was alive.

 _But_...

Oh God here came the ‘but,’ a flashing neon light ready to smack her in the face as she came back to reality, catching her breath at last. _But_ their situation couldn’t go on, not like it was - _she_ couldn’t go on. She had to learn from her mistakes. Now, before it was too late, before she did what he had never managed too and broke herself.

In terms of bad ideas caring for the Joker was right up there with swimming naked slathered in raw chicken in a shark tank, it was a pure Darwinian failure but she did it anyway. She cared about him. Too much. She’d never been very good at moderation when it came to her feelings, her _real_ feelings, not the plastic front she’d been touting for so many years now. When someone got beneath the surface, when she counted them as a _real_ friend, she’d just about do anything for them. She'd always seen it as her best strength and greatest weakness.

Only he wasn’t her friend.

He could _never_ be her friend.

He was her patient, her nightmare, the face of her broken past.

And she was so absurdly grateful he wasn’t dead she was half scared she’d float away on the feeling.

Heat prickled across her nerves, the memory of his hand closing over hers. Tight and rough and _real._ She flexed her fingers weakly, swallowing hard as she cleaned her face up in the shiny glass of her certificates. Adjusting one where it hung at the wrong angle as something bright and jagged sparked back in her eyes. It was like a reflection in a broken bottle, the ghost of something she didn’t want to acknowledge rising to the surface.

_Not yet._

Not now.

Because despite it all, her relief, her fear, her absolute certainty that she had to distance herself from Mistah J again or else, there was something else weighing on her mind. Something she had completely bypassed until now.

The Jester was dead.

And it was probably her fault.

 

J was waiting for her in the interview room that afternoon, her heart doing that ridiculous little ferris wheel flip as she caught sight of him.

Gesturing the orderlies away with a wave, Harley seated herself carefully in her spot and fixed J with her most professional stare, careful to cover up the guilt she could feel writhing in her belly like a worm. The _relief_ that still set her insides trembling.

He looked innocent, _far_ too innocent.

But _alive._

“So,” she pursed her lips tightly, pen tapping against her clipboard as she tried to remember everything she’d said to herself that morning in the face of him, his blue-green gaze shooting straight through her,  “David Young, AKA the Jester was found dead in his cell yesterday... I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that would you, Mistah J?”

Innocence turned to affront, his eyes widening to the size of plates as he grasped at his chest theatrically, “Me? I’m wounded, Harls! I was in my cell all night, ask anyone!”

She had. Cautious little inquires disguised as passing comments even as she poured over the security logs and check sheets. As she scoured the infirmary records _just_ to make sure he was okay. As far as anyone knew J had been locked tightly in his cell for the last three days.

It didn’t mean anything to her.

Walls couldn’t hold J anymore than laws could, he was beyond that. Beyond all of them. A creature unbound, looking at her with fire in his eyes and a crocodile smile. Begging her to come closer even as she wormed further back in her seat, chest tight as she fingered her notes.

 _Your fault,_ she singsonged to herself as she caught sight of the death report, the images of the Jester’s dead body burned into the back of her eyes. His brain splattered over his cell like the worlds grimmest Jackson Pollock painting.

Suicide, the coroner said, even if it wasn’t. Suicide was easier, less paperwork.

_Your faulllllt._

_Facts, Harley,_ she reminded herself sharply, _focus on the facts._

“So you don’t find anything suspicious about the fact Mr Young decided to take his own life so soon after you became aware of his presence here?” she continued crisply, like nothing was wrong, like she hadn't been the one to tell him, “Or that he did so by bashing his head against the wall so violently that his brains spilt out?”

“First off, that was frickin morbid, _seriously_ ,” he grinned wickedly, his tongue snaking out to taste his scars as he considered her, smile twisting darkly, “And second, you’re the doctor, not me! Did you find it _suspicious_? You were the one who brought him in after all…”

He let his sentence dangle, a cold chill creeping in with the silence. His shoulders hitched, eyes narrowing knowingly as she caught her breath.

“And what exactly,” she asked as calmly as she could as the panic rose, self recrimination threatening to drown her even as she repeated _‘facts facts facts_ silently to herself like a prayer, “is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m just saying” he shrugged, voice lowering conspiratorially, “you have a history of _violence_ too yaknow - hell I remember one time when you took a hammer to a guy’s hea-“

“That’s enough.”

Her chest cramped up, ears suddening ringing with the satisfying _thwack_ of metal against flesh, the crack and crunch of bones. Brains as artwork.

So easy. So so easy. _Freeing._

Bitterness coated her tongue as she fought to control herself, to stop the panic from overriding her senses. The pieces that had cracked loose that morning turned razor sharp inside her own head, no amount of masking tape keeping them together now.

She hadn’t killed the Jester. She wouldn’t…

Would she?

 _You wanted him dead too_ , the brassy, bold part of her said. The part that spoke with an unashamed accent and said all the things she couldn’t let herself think. _Why else would you have made such a big deal of telling Mistah J?_

 _It was to get him back on track,_ she shot back at herself, the edge of a whine in her thoughts, of desperation, _He would have been distracted for weeks if I hadn’t!_

She was slipping again, pieces of her falling away in chunks as she struggled for a hand hold. Anything to keep her from falling apart there and then in the middle of the interview room.

“Hey - Hey Harls, I was only joking!”

Suddenly J was there again, at her side as he perched against the table. His bound hands reaching and gently pulling away her glasses, leaving her blinking stupidly up at him as she came back to herself. She inhaled, deep and slow, the first proper breath she’d taken all day.

“Really,” he said, almost soothingly, “the guy offed himself, it happens all the time in this dump. No big deal.”

_No big deal._

She seized the words, clenching them close to her chest as she met his gaze. As close to understanding as she’d ever seen him, the mad spark a comforting warmth as she really looked at him. Taking in every line and scar, the photoshopped-colours and the human underneath.

The man.

Maybe she was wrong to think it was a mistake to get closer to him, to stop caring, maybe that was the key to untangling this whole mess. To healing them both. She didn’t know anymore, she only knew that suddenly it was easier to breathe. The panic draining away under his steady focus, a life raft in the sea of her own mind.

“You’re right,” she nodded at last, exhaling deeply before fixing a smile on her face “let’s move on then-”

“Wanna talk about it?” He asked instead, pushing back so he was sitting fully on the table, legs dangling on either side of her chair.

“That’s my line isn’t it?” she offered with a tilt of her head.

He chuckled at that and she felt better. Which was utterly ridiculous, of course, but she wasn't complaining.

“Eh, I’m just trying it out for awhile,” he shrugged, manipulating his bound wrists until he could place the glasses on his nose, waggling his eyebrows over the top of the frames. They weirdly suited him, “you can have the gig back later. So, what’s on your mind, Harls?”

He grabbed up her notes and she didn’t even think of stopping him as he thumbed through them. Flicking curiously through the mix of her work and summaries from past doctors, not to mention the stack of mail she’d shoved underneath to remind herself to take home.

“Ooooh hold the phone - this looks fancy, Arkham Fundraiser this weekend huh, Harls?” He winked at her over the top of the glossy invitation she’d forgotten she’d left in the mix, “need a date?”

Snapping the card from his hand she hauled back her notes, face flushing again as she stuffed them under her chair. Almost brushing his thigh as she straightened up.

“I don’t think so, Mistah J,” she said as primly as she could with him still gazing at her through her glasses, the perfect mix of serious and ridiculous, “if I remember rightly that didn’t go too well for us last time.”

“First date or second?” He asked seriously, “cos if you’re still mad about Prom lemme remind you that I _did_ win us the crowns.”

She snorted despite herself, a stupid little giggle she had to physically force down, clenching her hands and shaking her head to clear it.

People had _died_ and she was laughing.

“Anyway, you knoooow what they say about third dates,” another eyebrow wiggle and she was having to swallow back another laugh, feeling lighter than she had in weeks as he grinned at her, “besides I’m the doctor now. I get to prescribe the treatment and I prescribe fun!”

She was about to ask what exactly he thought her condition was but stopped herself, a memory flickering to the surface.

_You’re totally... and completely… mad._

“I had a dream like this,” she muttered to herself as it replayed behind her eyes, heat creeping up in her cheeks at the memory.

She realised it was the wrong thing to say exactly three seconds after as the words left her mouth.

“What was that?!” J hunched forward eagerly, eyes flashing wickedly as he gaped at her, “you _dream_ about me Harley Girl? Oh I am _flattered_!”

 _Oh shit._ She blushed from head to toe, feeling her pulse throbbing everywhere at once as he leered at her, heart tripping in beats of two. _Stupid stupid stupid girl!_

“I didn’t - I don’t-“

“Oh noooo kiddo, you’re not getting away with it that easily!” He moved even closer, trapping her in place and sending what was left of her common sense careening out of the nearest window, “tell the doctor _everythingggg…_ what _kind_ of dreams were these exactly? Be as detailed as possible, I promise I’ll keep it to myself.”

He crossed his heart with his chained hands, gaze downright _filthy_ as it washed over her skin like a physical thing.

_Divert Harley! Divert!_

“What about you Mistah J?” Her voice came out lower than she intended, breathless as she tried to change his focus, to regain what little was left of her sanity, “What do you dream of?”

“Murder,” he shrugged, “mayhem, bright lights and flashing images… _you.”_

Nope, there it went. Woosh. Buh-bye now!

“Me?” She squeaked, ribs cracking as her heart made a bid for freedom.

“You… me… us…” he reached out, snagging the tie from her hair and working it free, “how much _fun_ we could have together.”

“W-why?” She breathed, unable to look away from that scarred smile now, the way his lips parted with every heavy breath as her hair cascaded over his hands. Why her? Why still after all this time? Why was he making her falter like this, making her… She caught herself teetering on the edge of madness, snatching herself back at the last possible moment and drawing away, “Why do you hate the Batman so much?”

Damn that had been a close one. She'd been seconds away from launching herself at him even if she'd never admit it to herself, throwing out the first question that came into her head. Anything to ease the tension that had curled up between them like smoke, hot and choking and almost certain to be deadly if she didn’t do something to stop it.

“Why do I…” he blinked at her stupidly, then his head was tilting back and he was laughing again. The sound echoing around her as her heart kept up its rapid tattoo. Dizzying and _wonderful._

 

—-

 

Oh she was too much!

What a crack up! He couldn’t help himself, it felt so good to laugh. The sound bouncing around the room until his eyes were watering and his ribs ached.

Trust her to bring old third wheel Batsy in to try and ruin the moment, still holding herself back from greatness even as she teetered on its edge. Her wide pupils and fluttering pulse calling out to him like a siren song, practically begging him to help her. To snip away those last few cords of sanity.

But the lady had asked a question.

“Why do I hate the Batman?” He repeated, wheezing as he tried to catch his breath, “Oh Harls, that’s funny. I don’t hate him at all!”

Her face turned beat red, pearly whites peaking out as she gasped at him, “you _don’t?”_

“Of course not!” he frowned, head tilting at her curiously, “I’m _fascinated_ by him.”

“Oh-okay…” she struggled to adjust, to look calm. It was _adorable_ , “so why are you um... fascinated by the Batman?

_Really Harls?_

He hitched his eyebrows at her, “He’s a grown man dressed as a bat. What’s _not_ to be fascinated by?”

“ _J_?” Oh look at her getting all pouty, baby blues batting at him. Gah, he couldn’t resist it, not with such a captivating captive audience.

“Alright, fine fine fine! I will tell you the story… if that’s what you want, of course?” He dangled the question infront of her like a chew toy and grinned as she leapt, nodding ever so eagerly.

“ _Yes!_ I mean… yes, please,” she patted at her hair self consciously, all blonde and tousled around her face, “if you wouldn’t mind telling it?”

“Oh go on then, you know I can’t deny you anything. So - picture it,” he threw his hands as wide as the cuffs would let him, fingers dancing as he painted the scene, “late night Gotham, a big old chemical refinery, moonlight dancing off the vats of poisonous slime inside.”

Oh he had her alright, seeing the way she tilted forward in the chair. He remembered the night like it was yesterday, his last bright clear moment. Time afterwards had become a dizzying rush of stops and starts and whirling colours.

“I’m pulling this job there, a grand plan, we’re talking headlines for _months_ and then all outta nowhere BAM this- this _guy_ turns up.” He grinned as the shadows drew in on him, “Huge great sonuvabitch with a cape and - and get this _pointy fucking ears.”_

And he was laughing again, it was just too absurd. A bat… _man._ Really! He thumped himself on the chest, trying to clear the sound as Harley fidgeted in her seat.

“Anyway anyway - so this _guy,_ this absolute nut bar decides to try and interfere with my show. Gives me a nice big lecture about the sanctity of life as we go Mano-a-Mano” he held up his fists, boxing the air as she nodded like a dog on a dashboard, “and then-” he broke off, still wheezing with laughter as he remembered the Big Speech(™) old Batsie had delivered about not killing folks and such. “You’re gonna putz Harley, really - so - so the speech yeah? He finishes it with this big ol’ punch and, honestly, he _pushes me into the chemical vat._ All that talk and then he just - boop!”

“Holy shit,” Harley murmured, breathless and big eyed and the absolutely best audience he could have asked for as she learnt even further towards him, jeez she was about to tip out of her damn chair, “ _holy shit,_ that _hypocrite!_ What happened?”

“I was reborn,” he swept his hands over himself with false modesty, the living embodiment of all he had become.

Jerome had died that day, his human follies and tangled past washed clean in burning acid. It had been the Joker who’d emerged in glorious technicolor.

“Batsie killed the old me dead and I still owe him a great… big… _thanks_ for it.”

His voice turned vicious, twisting on a dime as he imagined putting a fist through that stupid symbol on his chest. Why send flowers or a card when he could rip his beating heart from his chest? When he could drive him as _batty_ as his name. Poetic justice.

“I… um…” she was blushing again, struggling to find something to say after his big reveal. He could hardly blame her, “A previous doctor thought your confrontations with him were a way of acting out your latent homosexual desires.”

He snorted, he knew what the other doctors thought already. A buzzer noise breaking in his brain as he tilted his head at her.

It had been a cakewalk to get out of his cell the night before, Marky Mark was on duty. His instincts proved right, those quivering eyes and red cheeks were all the indication he needed of a push over. Offer some cash, threaten some friends and loved ones and voila, he was strolling down the hallways like he owned the place. Just like the good ol’ days.

He’d had to pinky promise he’d be back by morning rounds of course, but that wasn’t a problem. Like he’d told Marky, he had no intention of escaping until he was good and ready. It was just a _field trip._ One where he could beat the Jester to death in the comfort of his own cell before taking a leisurely detour to the office of a certain Doctor Quinzel.

He’d pawed through the little room for hours, making sure to cover his tracks so she didn’t get all squirrely after he’d flicked through her files. Although he did tilt one of her perfectly symmetrical framed certificates just a liiiittle.

He wondered if she’d noticed yet.

She didn’t have any photos out, not in fancy frames, no mom and pop pics or happy snaps of a boyfriend or best friend. No, the only photos were in files and, he was pleased to find, they were overwhelmingly of _him._ She must have had a copy of every report every doctor had made on him on her desk, each liberally noted with her own derision at their diagnosis. Atta girl.

Her own ideas were less certain, a dozen dozen thoughts scribbled out in the early ones until he found one that just said ‘think outside the system’, she stopped trying to pigeonhole him after that.

His clever Harley Girl.

He wondered what she thought of him now as he leant forward, muscles jumping as something coiled in the pit of his stomach. Ready to strike.

“Whadda you think Doc?” He flicked an eyebrow up at her, eyes darting hungrily towards her mouth, “that a vital component to my crazy?”

He never saw the deal about the whole sexuality thing. Men, women, circus performers, the whole lot of it was an unnecessary distraction, one he’d been perfectly content to keep out of his way.

Well… almost. Harley had a habit of making herself the exception to his rules, which would be infuriating if it wasn’t so _fascinating._ Even looking at her now with her flushed cheeks and wild hair he felt something itchy beneath his skin. Like he wanted to _ruffle_ her up a bit more, smear that cherry red lipstick like blood over her teeth.

“There’s no stigma in discussing your sexuality,” she breathed, staring up at him like a bunny in a trap, “you don’t have to prove anything.”

“I know,” he licked his lips, voice pitched low as anticipation flared inside him, “but maybe I want to anyway…”

He could feel her pulse beating beneath his hands, lacing his fingers around her neck as he dragged his thumbs across her jaw bone. Her eyes were almost black, fluttering shut as he leant forward.

_Now._

She gasped against his mouth, a pathetic little noise of submission that drove him crazy as he kissed her. Well kiss was maybe the wrong word, but it would have to do cos damn his brain was busy right now please and thank you. He bit at her, sinking his teeth into her lip until she _whimpered_ and power flooded his veins, a spark to tinder. He could crush her with one flex of his hands, squeeze the life out of her here and now and she would _let_ him.

Hell, she’d probably _thank_ him.

Satisfaction coiled beneath his skin as she leant into him, her fingers scrabbling for a hold against his shirt as she pressed herself into him. Begging for more. He couldn’t let it sway him though, no this was his dance and he was taking it slow, tasting her with languid fascination. Taking his time to catalogue each fractured little breath and stutter she made as she melted like cheap plastic, the sounds vibrating along his spine to pool like lava in his belly. Hot hot _hot_.

Last time he’d felt this good he’d had to blow up a nunnery.

Interesting. Very _interesting._

But enough of that.

Dropping his hold on her all at once he pulled away, smacking his lips loudly as she blushed and blushed. The last few zingy tingles coursed through him, curling right down to his toes as he made a show of straightening his sleeves.

“I-” Harley was magnificently flustered, blinking dazedly as she reached up self consciously to adjust her skewed collar. Clearing her throat she looked down at her clipboard, seemingly moving on autopilot as she scribbled a note out, “that’s that then.”

He couldn’t stop it, real harsh laughter echoing up from his bones again. A torrent of it spilling off his tongue with the taste of copper and lipstick and _fun._ Something inside him lightened, a lead balloon that burst and left him dizzy.

He’d missed her. _This._

The feeling gave him energy, vim and vigor and all that good stuff! A vibrancy that was wasted on his gray little stone cell, no no no he needed to _share_ the feeling. It was the only justifiable thing to do! Spread the laughter, the madness, maybe show the good folks at the Arkham Fundraiser exactly what they were paying for…

Yes that was it! It was time for a night on the town, a reminder to the good folks of Gotham to have a little _fun._

And hey… if Harley happened to be there too, well… that was just a bonus.

  



	10. I Did Something Bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Broken Dreams. Broken Locks. Broken Fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seeee I told you I wouldn't really disappear to herd goats in the Peruvian foothills! Still - I'm glad so many of you are still on board during this fun time last minute rush to get this fic finished! You are the best readers a gal could have and I hope y'all know how much I appreciate you!

 

She was dreaming again but at least she knew it this time. A far off distant part of her brain reminding her that in real life she probably wouldn’t be standing in an empty hall of mirrors for no apparent reason, the endless stretch of silver glass dimly lit with flickering Arkham bulbs. Green and cloying.

Like she was under water.

J was standing right behind her, there was no doubting it was him this time. Even if she couldn’t see his face reflected next to hers as clear as day she would have known it, his singular warmth against her spine. Fever hot and suffocating, the scent of gunpowder and cheap soap and the dizzy trace of chemicals.

She drank him in by the lungful, his calloused fingertips digging into her skin as he pressed his face into her hair, his hands bracketing her hips.

Her incredibly naked hips.

Her incredibly naked  _ everything. _

Heat swamped her, heart stuttering as she scrambled to cover herself. He was too fast, catching her wrists in one smooth motion and trapping them by her sides. 

“No no no,” he murmured in that delicious sing song of his as her skin  _ burnt _ , the delicate bones in her wrists grinding together as he held her tight enough to hurt,  “no more hiding Harley Girl. That time is  _ done _ .”

“Mistah J!” She squirmed, embarrassed and just a little bit exhilarated as he watched her through the cold mirrors gaze. It was  _ physical,  _ each brush of his eyes against her sparking like a flame. 

“ _ Look.” _

She did. Swallowing tightly as she forced herself to look at her own reflection, her breath leaving her in a rush as she saw herself for the first time in a long time like he did.

Alien. Powerful. Stripped bare and smeared with makeup, smudged red lipstick and blurred black eyeliner - like she’d worn before but different,  _ adult,  _ a fun house mirror of his own.

“Two of a kind,” she whispered as his fingers traced up her side, moving from her shoulder to her neck to her mouth. Dragging the red paint into a lopsided smile. 

It hurt in the best way. Each calculatedly careless touch bringing painful awareness to a new set of nerves, a pulsing rush of  _ need  _ that burnt beneath her skin. In her head, in her veins, between her thighs. 

She flushed and he laughed, the sound vibrating sweetly through her chest as he let her move at last. Let her turn, face to face and skin to skin at last. He towered over her, filling her head until there was nothing left but them.

“Last chance kiddo,” he grinned, one calloused hand braced against her spine, the other pressing a knife into her hand.

The same knife it always was, the one in her dreams, the one she’d gotten so used to as a teenager. The one she’d stabbed him with. Stabbed others with.

“What do you want me to do with this?” She asked, his smile softening as she hefted it in her hand. It felt lighter now than it had then, gleamed brighter. 

“What do  _ you  _ want you to do with it?” 

He was a tease, always, his meanings wrapped up in meanings wearing jokes. She let her gaze fall, travelling down his pale neck to the wide expanse of chest in front of her. White as paper, lean and strong and laced with scars.

He was waiting for her to do it, what she always failed to do before.

_ Last chance. _

Lifting the blade in her hand she held it against his chest, above his heart, like he taught her. Seeing the madness dancing in his eyes as she readied herself for it all to be over.

The dreams, the interviews, the kisses, all of it.

“Now or never, Harley Girl,” he whispered.

He was right.

Only… only… 

This wasn't what she wanted at all.

What she wanted was for him to kiss her again,  _ touch _ her. Sweep her up in his world and make her forget all about everything else, make her  _ feel. _

The knife clattered to the floor, echoing up through her toes as she pressed herself against him. Stretching as far as she could to reach his face, to hold it between her hands as tight as she could and kiss him until she felt herself tearing apart inside.

Letting his madness set her aflame and laughing as she burnt.

Harley woke up gasping, shame and desire crushing her chest as she fell back into herself. Sweat sticky against her skin as she dragged herself upright, still burning with the memory of his touch.

She’d let him kiss her,  _ again. _

Days had passed and she couldn't forget it. Couldn't get past it. She’d practically  _ begged  _ him too, asking him those loaded questions about his sex life, about… God, what had gotten into her? She traced her hand across her throat, feeling the rough pads of his fingers clenching against her pulse. His mouth burning sweetly against hers, demanding and unbearably slow as he unmade her from the inside.

Groaning she punched the pillow, biting the inside of her cheek as a steady heat licked at the inside of her skin. Taunting and desperate and utterly  _ him _ as she squirmed against it.

It was intolerable, it was  _ insane. _

And the worst part, the absolute soul shattering, nightmare inducing awfulness of it all, was that she couldn’t quite bring herself to feel bad about it at all. The guilt currently squeezing her lungs like an empty toothpaste tube came entirely from her  _ lack  _ of guilt alone.

Logically she knew the truth, she was a doctor, he was a patient. She was a victim, he was an abuser.

It was so unbelievably  _ wrong.  _

But logic didn’t seem enough anymore, a footnote compared to  _ feeling.  _ Compared to the dizzying, terrifying possibilities he opened in her mind.

Dragging herself up from bed she faced herself in the mirror, right back in the dream again as she wondered who was looking at back. Who exactly was this girl who couldn’t stop thinking about what it would feel like to have a homicidal maniac’s hands on her hips and his mouth at her ear...

The doorbell went, a creaky whine followed by an insistent banging that had her scrambling to attention. Shame threatening to drown her as she darted towards the sound. 

“What?” She half-shouted, pulling back the chains and almost ripping the door of the hinges. Blinking hard as a bright purple shirt filled her view.

Oh.

Oh no.

_ Oh fuck yes. _

Her heart stuttered to a halt, adrenaline crashing through her veins with a sick wave of  _ excitement,  _ her late night fantasies coming true. Desire and terror and - and it drained away. Leaving her hollow and red faced as she took in the rest.

The shirt was too big, straining over a beer gut and stained to shit. The face above it bloated and red, crowned with stringy hair.

Eesh. That was that moment killed.

“Mr Dudley,” she nodded her head, snapping her teeth together in something that could never truly be called a smile, “What can I do for you?”

Her landlord blinked at her, expression turning from surprised to ogling in a split second. Roving over her pyjama clad figure and making her anger swell as he strolled into her apartment like he owned the place. 

Which technically he did, but  _ still _ .

“Miss Quinzel, glad I caught ya.” He grinned with broken teeth, making a show of looking around the room, “Love what you’ve done with the place.”

She winced tightly, eight years of med school and she was being short changed to a ‘miss’ by this greasy fuck. 

_ Not the time Harley girl,  _ she reminded herself,  _ just get this over with so we can go back to falling apart in peace. _

“Yeah well, I gotta get to work soon,” she lied to him, apparently satisfied with the room his gaze had gone right back to her cleavage. She folded her arms across her chest, clearing her throat loudly, “So?”

“I was just going round checking up on things, letting my tenants know that the rent will be going up next month,” he leered, a cloying attempt at sympathy in his voice, syrupy and sickening “y’know, rising prices in the city and all…”

“ _ Seriously _ ?” She couldn’t control her volume any more than her accent, the words coming out in a strangled whine as the last remnants of her dream were shattered by cold hard reality, “I can’t afford that!”

“I understand,” he simpered as she tuned him out, mentally running through her bank details and trying to add up her monthly pay, “of course,” he added, her attention snapping back to him with a sharp look, “I’m a reasonable man. A young  _ professional  _ like you, I’m sure we could come to a… uh… arrangement…”

The word trailed of with a greasy smirk, eyebrows hitched high on his swollen face as she fought the urge to gag. A meaty hand clamped on her arm, clammy and unwelcome as he patted at her like a dog.

“What kinda  _ arrangement?”  _ Her nose wrinkled suspiciously, trying not to wince as his sweaty paw undulated against her bicep.

“Oh you know…” straggly eyebrows danced, fat face lit up with barely restrained excitement, “something  _ mutually beneficial _ …”

His hand trailed over her arm, dangerously close to the goods as he tried to sidle up closer to her.

Oh.  _ That  _ then.

God almighty what a  _ joke,  _ it was the oldest gag in the book and  _ disgustingly  _ unoriginal. And, yaknow, plain disgusting. And so not her first rodeo either, why the hell had she thought Dull Dudley would be any better than the Professor’s who’d offered to boost her grades. The bosses who’d offered to cut her hours.

Who the fuck did they think she was?

She’d smiled and simpered then, demurely crying off so as not to hurt her academic record or get her ass fired.

This time she didn’t hold back.

“Really?” She sneered, slapping his hand away from her with a theatrical shudder, “that’s the best ya can come up with? You’re just insulting my intelligence now.”

His face creased in rage, “I’m just trying to be  _ nice,  _ you’re all on your lonesome girly and you could use a friend right now!”

He grabbed at her again, hand clenched tight around her shoulder and she snapped. Grabbing his hand she yanked his fingers back with a sound like twigs breaking, satisfying and visceral as his face mottled purple and he  _ yowled. _

A fat fist aimed at her, swinging wildly towards her head as he clutched his broken fingers to his chest. “You’ll pay for that bitch.”

“Sure thing,” she spat, ducking the blow easily and kicking him in the crotch, following as he went sprawling back across her shitty kitchen. “Keep the change!”

Rage spiralled through her, bright and blinding as she snatched up a knife from the side, running on instinct as she pushed it into his fleshy neck.

“W-wh-wh-“ he stammered as she jammed it against his pulse, a thin trail of crimson beading along the blade as her pulse pounded in her ears.

“Listen creep,” she hissed, fire roaring through her veins as he cowered away from her in fear, “try this shit again, to  _ anyone, _ and I’ll make sure it’s the last thing you do. Gottit?”

“Y-yes ma’am,” the rank stench of sweat and stale beer crawled up her nostrils as she pressed the knife even closer. That same pin sharp fear in his eyes she’d evoked so long ago, the same rush of power in her bones.

_ Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!  _ The voice in her head chanted, vicious and gleeful,  _ Make him pay!  _

Her hand trembled, desire and darkness and the thrill of it all coursing through her as she watched his pulse  _ jump. _

Then she pulled away, knife dropping to her side as she jerked her thumb at the door. Watching him scramble out as the coldness sank in, his whimpering fading away as she slouched over and slammed the door shut behind him.

That was one thing she had to thank J for she supposed even if she hadn’t realised it until today.

She hadn’t been scared.

Not really, not once since she left him. Dark alleyways, boys at parties, fat landlords, handsy professors, she knew in her soul that if anyone took a step at her threateningly, if they did something she didn’t like, she could and would kill them. She knew how after all.

She had  _ experience. _

How could she be afraid of anyone else after  _ him _ ? She’d seen the worst humanity had to offer, had lived with him, had kissed him. Everyone else… they were like white noise to her now.

When an eviction notice was pushed under her door two hours later she could only laugh. A hollow sound halfway between a sob and a giggle as she slumped over her kitchen table.

What had happened to her that  _ this  _ was her life? 

It yawned emptily in front of her, spitting up images of endless years of crappy apartments, creepy landlords and a job that didn’t even cover dental.

Was this  _ it _ ?

Was her whole life work and this place and failing to make outside friends because she no longer had the time? If it wasn’t for J she probably  _ would _ have gone mad by now, something she’d find hilariously ironic is she wasn’t so close to crying.

She’d dreamt of this life,  _ her _ life, for so long, only now she was living it… it didn’t seem enough anymore. Not when the only time she seemed to  _ feel _ anything anymore was around a psychopathic murderer, the same one she was subconsciously trying to bone in her dreams.

_ Fuck _ .

Flicking through the junk mail on the table dully she snorted when her gaze fell on a glossy invitation, the Arkham Fundraiser.

It was tonight.

Maybe that was what she needed. Put this whole  existential crisis away for another time, when she was more herself again. When she could study her reaction to J clinically and decide the best course of action.

Maybe tonight she just needed to get dressed up and drunk.

 

—-

 

Stripes were  _ so  _ last season.

Why hadn’t he noticed until now? Jeez, it was  _ embarrassing _ , and so not at all the way to start his biggest night in months! Oh no no no, the event said black tie and he wouldn’t be the one ass who didn’t make the effort.

So the effort he would make!

Well, once he checked out of course, his time at the Arkham Facility for Recreation and Insanity well and truly done with now. Time to get back to the real world, the bright lights and blood soaked streets.

Dancing over to the door he rapped smartly on the metal, excitement tingling beneath his skin. He always got itchy fingers before a big night.

“Yoohoo!” He called, “someone crack the door wouldya. It’s getting awful stuffy in here.”

The hatch creaked open, and lucky lucky him! His personal pet guard was on duty. Of all his Arkham projects Marky was the softest touch, the easiest to arm wrestle. The fattest fish in his big ol’ barrel of  _ fun _ .

“Mark! It must be fate!” He grinned his .45 caliber smile, tension bleeding through him as he met watery eyes, the prelude to a storm, “ _ how’s the family?” _

“N-no way,” the guard stuttered, J could see his hand trembling at the edge of the hatch, fingers all sausagey and pallid, almost pre-corpsified for his convenience, “I’m not letting you out again you- you said it was a one time thing.”

Every time was a one time thing, Marky Mark should know that by now! That’s what made it so fun - another day, another life, another  _ adventure _ .

“I know, I know I did,” he tried his very best to look contrite, “but it’s a very busy night, buddy! I gotta party I gotta go to and I already RSVP’d, people are waiting, it’s a - a whole thing, you understand!”

“N-no-“ he started again and J’s patience snapped, seizing the guards hand he yanked it bodily into his cell, jamming it as far as he could through the slot before pressing backwards on his fingers.

“Yes yes yes.” He sighed, snapping one and earning a howl of pain for his troubles, “suck it up buttercup. Now shut ya mouth and open the door before I break the rest of them.”

There was a scrabbling sound, metal clinking and scraping as the door shuddered outwards. Marky’s arm jerking back through the hatch as J strolled out.

“That wasn’t so hard was it?” He beamed, face falling as he spotted the gun aimed directly at his gut by the shaking guard. He tutted sadly, “now that’s just uncalled for. Still, ya know what they say about life and lemons?”

He didn’t wait for the response, wheeling on the guard in an unrestrained fit of violence. God it felt  _ good _ , satisfying to work out some of that manly tension with an old fashioned spot of blood sport. 

Like falling off a particularly violent log.

“Me neither,” he cackled as he pulled Marky’s limp body into the cell and started to strip him. Jeez would it have killed him to shower once in a while? The whole getup smelt like BO and donuts, hardly  _ brut pour homme _ . Still there was time, he’d get out, gussy himself up a bit and still have plenty of time to make a grand entrance at the Arkham Fundraiser.

It was the  _ perfect  _ entertainment for the evening. A good old fashioned robbery maybe, he hadn’t done that in a while and in the life of crime money was a must. A distasteful must, and one that he personally didn’t see the big whoop about, but even he’d learned eventually that he couldn’t just kill  _ everyone  _ to get what he wanted.

Sometimes ya had to pay an arms dealer straight, that was the way of things.

Besides the money would be going to him anyway, wouldn’t it? It was an  _ Arkham  _ Fundraiser after all, really he was just cutting out the middleman. And there was nothing to say he couldn’t have a little  _ fun  _ whilst he was at it. Drop a few bodies, make a lil show.

Catch up with a girl.

Hell he might even stop by to pick up some flowers on the way. Just in case he  _ did  _ run into his little lady there, certain she’d appreciate the gesture. 

“Sorry about that Marky,” he called over his shoulder, tipping his stolen hat at the corpse as he headed for the door, plans already unfurling in front of him, “but it’s date night!”

  
  
  
  



	11. I Wish You Would

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harley really should be careful what she wishes for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tickets please ladies and gentlemen, tickets please! No one's getting into the Arkham fundraiser without one!  
> Or are they? :-P  
> Well here we are again folks, two days left, two chapters left - cross your fingers for me that I can pull this off :-P  
> And as always, thank you so much for your continued comments and support - I really really hope you enjoy the rest of the ride! :D

Harley felt like a new woman.

A new woman with a whacking great hole in her overdraft. 

She shrugged it off as she handed her ticket over to the doorman, it was worth every penny for the fairytale feeling she’d managed to claw onto for a few hours at least. The pampered frivolity she’d always coveted in teen movie makeover montages and glossy magazine pages.

Something plastic and pretty and  _ hers,  _ just for an hour or two at least when she was getting her hair styled and picking out a new evening gown she couldn’t afford in the slightest. It was red, the first red party dress she’d bought in years, since… since her prom dress.

She’d brushed the thought off, it was absolutely ridiculous to keep avoiding the colour on special occasions. She had red sweaters after all, red t-shirts, why should a red dress be any different?

Especially since it had always been the colour that looked best on her. 

The ballroom was picture perfect, elegant Gotham socialites mixing with the slightly less elegant figures of her work colleges. She could pick them out from a mile away, they had the same red eyed tiredness about them, a far cry from the silk smooth faces of Gotham’s richest, untouched by the ravages of work or worry.

She wondered if she’d managed to erase the same damage with her make up or if she looked as worn as they did. Eh. Either way she wasn’t here for a fashion show.

No, tonight was for half sane conversation and copious amounts of alcohol only. There would be no thinking about work, no thinking about her empty bank account, and absolutely _no_ thinking about he who must not be thought about.

Snagging a glass from a passing waiter she fixed a smile on her face and breezed towards a knot of familiar faces across the room. 

“Harley! We were just talking about you!” Elizabeth Eddows was drunk already, Harley was surprised to find it suited her. The usually pained expression and severe haircut styled into something looser,  _ funner _ as Harley broached the group of doctors.

What did they call a group of doctors anyway? A herd? A scurry?

A dose?

“Let me introduce you to our host, this  _ charming  _ young man is Bruce Wayne, one of the patrons of Arkham,” she was drunk  _ and  _ matchmaking then, uncomfortable but not unbearable, “Bruce this Doctor Harley Quinzel, our new resident.”

Harley barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes as the stranger in their midst was thrust forward like a lamb to slaughter, handsome and guileless as he was herded towards her, some of the others frittering away to refill their glasses. Meeting Gotham's first son would be a talking point later if nothing else.

“Nice to meet you - oh!” the words caught, trapped in a little bubble of surprise as she accepted his hand, beetle black eyes smiling down at her, “I remember you!”

“I remember you too,” Bruce smiled, he had the most perfectly even teeth she’d ever seen. Straight and white as his eyes crinkled at the corners, “having a better night I hope?”

“Much,” she grinned, face flushing as she remembered the last time they’d met, outside a bar at one am in the morning. Her crying her mascara off during an ill timed break down, him being ever so polite about it.  _ Awkward.  _ “I had no idea I’d been rescued by the famous Bruce Wayne!”

“Hardly famous,” he  _ blushed,  _ honest to goodness actually blushed as he ran a hand through his hair, “I’m just flattered you remembered me at all.”

“Trust me, a girl  _ always _ remembers the nice ones,” she winked conspiratorially, feeling more balanced than she had in days, almost peppy as she added in an undertone, “I promise I won’t start crying this time.”

“I’ll try not to either then, although with this crowd... I make no promises,” he whispered back, eyes twinkling as Elizabeth edged her way back into the conversation. Gaze flicking back and forth eagerly.

“I was just telling Bruce here about your stellar work with one of our more  _ challenging _ patients-“

Her bubble burst. Good mood twisting as  _ he  _ flashed before her eyes with a vengeance. Sharp smile, mocking eyes, that kiss...

No no no, not thinking about him.

“Elizabeth, I don’t-“ Harley stammered, trying to cut off the conversation before it could begin. To shove that thought back in it’s box where it belonged until she was ready to face it.

“I‘d love to hear all about it.” Bruce interjected, all eager smiles and soft eyes.

The expression had been charming a moment ago, now it became insipid. A handsome idiot who had absolutely no right to know anything about that area of her life.

None of them did.

Clearing her throat she tried again to steer them to a safer topic, muttering subtly, “Patient doctor confidentiality, Elizabeth.”

It fell on deaf ears.

“No need to be so  _ modest _ Harley, Bruce’s on the  _ board, _ ” Elizabeth beamed as if that explained everything, voice only slurring a little as she batted her eyelashes at Bruce, “Harley here’s our star recruit, she’s working with  _ the Joker.” _

Harley cringed, there he was again in all his technicolor glory, taking up residence in the back of her mind like he owned the place. Her stomach sank, heat crawling up into her cheeks at Elizabeth's enthusiastic words. W _orking with._ That sure as hell was _one_ way of putting it, she wasn’t exactly sure what part of her job description involved making out with the inmates.

Jeez, if anyone ever found out...

“The Joker?” Bruce’s eyes widened, cutting into her thoughts with the same expression of disbelief they always gave her. The look that said ‘ _ You? Are you sure?’ “ _ That must be a lot of work.”

“Our Harley is a miracle worker,” Elizabeth was practically waggling her eyebrows, a freshly manicured hand landing on Harley’s elbow and clenching tight, “Bruce is our biggest donor, you should tell him  _ alllll _ about it.”

“I’d love that, it must be a fascinating case,” Bruce blinked, a big handsome deer in the headlights, “do you really feel like someone like the Joker can be rehabilitated?”

She didn’t even get a chance to reply before Eddows was cutting in again, snorting loudly as she grabbed another glass of wine. “ _ Sure _ .”

Oh this was not happening. Not tonight. Good lord could the universe not cut her a break once in a while? Just  _ once _ ?

She bared her teeth in a tight smile, something icy coiling in her chest as their eyes fell on her and she had to confront her personal homicidal elephant in the room for her audience. Couldn’t she go one night without having to justify herself to anyone?

“I don’t think it’s professional of me to discuss a… a  _ patient _ in a situation like this,” her cheeks ached with the effort of keeping the smile in place, running hot and cold as anger and embarrassment fought for control of her, “but I truly believe with the right system in place  _ anyone _ can be helped.”

“The right system?” Bruce at least looked interested, politely curious instead of the down right derision she could see on her supervisors face.

Knocking back the last of her champagne she threw caution to the wind, they’d asked and she’d answer. Whether Elizabeth liked it or not.

“Yes,” she nodded, skin prickling with nervous tension, “we’re using antiquated methods on a whole new spectrum of extreme personalities, surely we have to actually  _ understand _ our patients before we can hope to help them acclimatise,” she thought of J and his perfect anarchy, Ivy and her righteous crusade, all of them with something to offer and no one to listen. It made her chest ache, “if indeed it shouldn’t be us acclimatising to them. I fail to see how we can do  _ anything _ productive to help them at all if we waste all our time trying to fit them into categories that were never meant to fit them.”

Bruce nodded, an understanding look in his gaze. Surprise pulsed through her, a little touch of warmth at his obvious interest. How long had it been since someone had taken her seriously, someone on the  _ board _  too _ , _ maybe she could actually-

Elizabeth snorted loudly again, her eyes rolling like a mad horse.

“Not this again, Harley,” she sighed dramatically, killing the last of her good mood dead,  “some people just can’t be helped. Trust me, the best we can hope for is keeping them from hurting anyone else. You’ll understand one day.”

Harley’s fingers tightened around the stem of her glass, hatred settling like a stone in her gut as her gaze fell on her supervisor.

Elizabeth Eddows didn’t have a goddamn clue.

Not about J, not about her, not about  _ anything. _

“Excuse me would you,” she bared her teeth, knowing it was time to remove herself from the conversation before she did something she might regret. Like bitch slapping her supervisor, “I’m just going to get some air, the wine must have gone to my head. Bruce, Elizabeth.”

Ugh, it would have been satisfying though, knocking that smug fucking look off her face. Bam.

Harley curled her hands into fists, not waiting for a response as she whirled on her heel and headed for the opposite end of the ballroom. 

_ Breathe Harls,  _ she reminded herself tersely, snatching up another glass as the balcony doors came into view,  _ we’re being sane tonight, remember? _

She huffed, slipping through the doors and into the cold night air. Sanity was seeming more and more overrated by the minute. Heaving out a sigh she breathed in the ice, glad it was early enough in the night and late enough in the year that she was the only one outside. If only because it meant for a moment or two she didn’t have to pretend. 

Pretend to be normal, to be happy, to be  _ content. _

She braced her hands against the railing and let the anger roll off her, flecks of metal embedding in her palm as she looked out over Gotham City.

Her new old home was weirdly beautiful from up here, all twinkling lights and darkened alleys. Every shadow promising excitement, trapped in the moment before the storm. A drawn breath, just waiting for something to happen.

She wondered where Arkham was in the darkness, where  _ he  _ was. What he was thinking about. Unable to keep from wishing, just for a second, that he could be here with her now. That she had someone she could actually talk too.

Someone who would understand.

Which was insane, of course. 

 

—

 

It was a cold town but he couldn’t feel it, sweat beading beneath the collar his three piece suit even as his breath clouded in the air in front of him. It was impossible to be cold with her looking like that in her slinky red dress and rage filled eyes.

The fates had lined up for him again, ducks at a shooting gallery as she drained her glass and sighed, all alone in the coldness. He’d stashed himself away out here, finding a space between the ornamental shrubbery as he waited for his  _ grand entrance.  _ Showmanship was a skill that required waiting sometimes, much to his annoyance.

Still, he trusted the kids were setting it all up, getting the main exits blocked off so no one went scurrying off before he stepped up to the plate. It was good to see ‘em again, his ever changing little fun house of crazies, just waiting for him to show up and give their meaningless lives some direction. Some  _ fun.  _

He was all too happy to oblige, especially after all those months of Arkham giving him fun-time blue balls.

Speaking of...

“How come you never wear  _ that _ to our appointments?”

Harley froze, champagne slipping from her hand in a symphony of breaking glass as she turned slowly to find him. Her gaze flitting over the shadows, two perfect circles aimed right at his face.

“Mistah J?”

Ahhh there was the look, the familiar swirl of shock and panic and… was that excitement? My oh my. He mooched forward, glad he’d taken the time to get his best suit out of storage as her gaze flickered over him. Preening a little as he stepped into her space. No table between them now, no handcuffs, no troubles.

“Miss me, doc?”

Her breath hitched, a tremor running through her as he trailed his fingers along the side of her arm. She must have been cold, all naked skin and that ridiculously strappy dress.

“You couldn’t just wait for our appointment tomorrow?” She asked quietly, lifting a brow at him as he got even closer, as he turned her arm over so he could see his scar. His hallmark. Waiting for him like it always was, that imperfect J that marked her forever as his.

“What can I say-“ he traced the letter carelessly before meeting her gaze again, grinning widely, “I’m not known for my patience.”

“What’re you doing here?” 

Stupid question. 

“Come on Harls,” he rolled his eyes at her, “you really have to ask? Bit of mayhem, mutilation…”

“Chaos?” She was still shaking, a whisper faint tremor that seemed to vibrate in sync with the thrumming in his veins. Like someone had plucked a cord along his spine.

“Only the finest.” She’d curled her hair, bits of it hanging loose like lil snakes around her face. He reached up, feeding the corn silk strands through his itching fingers, “Not gonna try and run again are you, Harley Girl?” 

“I should, shouldn’t I?” 

“It would be the  _ sane  _ thing to do.” He nodded seriously, disdain colouring his words, “that and screaming and crying and that…  _ jazz.” _

That boring  _ boring _ jazz. Ugh, so predictable, he expected better of her now. But then he’d expected better of her before...

“It would be,” she didn’t move, didn’t scream.

The tension beneath his skin notched tighter, the head dizzying, rib clawing feeling before jumping out of a plane. 

“Oooor…” he leant down, inhaling her by the lungful, vanilla shampoo mixed with cheap champagne and face powder, “if you’re  _ curious _ … you could always join the party. I’m looking for someone to play hostage in my grand entrance.”

He was offering it all again, all the things he’d sworn he’d take this time, like a  _ chump  _ most likely but still. He had to know, had to  _ see  _ her reaction. See if she really could be all he dreamt of and more.

“I thought curiosity killed the cat?” Her voice had turned breathy, brash, a siren song as his hands found her waist somehow. Jeez they just had a life of their own there didn’t they? Moulding so perfectly to her form. But then again it was the  _ gentlemanly _ thing to do, he supposed, keep her warm in all this chilliness.

“But satisfaction, Harley girl…” he drew her in tighter, like they were dancing, all that silky fabric slipping against his suit as she gasped just a little. Her blue eyes almost black as he searched for  _ her _ in them, “satisfaction brought it back. Well… Wanna play?”

“Are you going to kill anyone?”

_ Like that mattered!  _ He growled against her skin, feeling the softness of her cheek against his scars as he got all up in her space. She melted against him like a Barbie in a microwave.

“Haven’t decided,” he murmured, “it's a party for  _ me  _ after all, all these nice people wanting to donate to the cause… I’m just here to cut out the middleman. How deep I cut however…”

“Okay.”

She said it shotgun quick. Okay.  _ Okay.  _ He felt like  _ purring,  _ pulling away sharply and twirling her in his arms. Pressing her back tightly against his chest as she gasped at the sudden movement. As she  _ giggled. _

Oh that was his girl alright! 

“Just follow my lead kiddo,” he couldn’t keep from grinning as his phone buzzed, chuckling to himself at the perfect perfect timing! “And try and look ap- _pro_ -priately scared and awed wouldcha? Should be easy, I’m a… pretty awe inspiring guy.”

She snorted as he waggled his eyebrows at her, a blush staining her cheeks in the half light as she widened her eyes, “whatever you say, Mistah J.”

Oh she had sass alright. Sass and class and a whole lotta ass. But that was a thought for later, gotta keep focused. Keep his eye on the murder ball. 

Right - where were they? Ah yes, weaponry. 

Sliding the knife from his belt he balanced it in his hand, a natural extension of himself. One he’d been too long without. Pressing it gently into the ivory skin of her neck he flashed back to the first time they’d met. The first time he’d held a knife on her all those hundreds of years before in another lifetime.

God if he could see himself now back then… heh, he’d have thought he was crazy! 

“Ready?” he nipped at her ear, not waiting for reply as they started playing his song. “It’s gonna be a hell of a show.”

 


	12. Don't Blame Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thems the breaks.  
> Literally sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh we're so close to the end! I can't believe it! I really hope I'll have the last chapter up before the episode drops tomorrow, but I still have to actually sit down and... yaknow... write most of it :-P Omg so anyway yeah, please cross ya fingers for me!
> 
> As always my eternal thanks to those of you who are still taking the time to read and comment - you are the best!!!

 

It was the sensible course of action.

A measured response to a chaotic situation, it was for the best. It was blah blah  _ blah.  _

God, even now the calm clinical doctor's voice in her head was trying to justify it. Telling her that J obviously had a plan, one that her screaming and crying on a balcony wouldn't do anything to stop. That the most sensible way to get out of the situation was to do as he said until she was in a position to alert the authorities.

She shut it out, this was no time for rational logical  _ boring  _ thinking. Not when the rest of her, the overwhelming majority of her it seemed, just didn’t care anymore.

Well that wasn’t strictly true. It was worse. She  _ wanted  _ to see what he was going to do next. To be a part of it. Seat edge adrenaline and shame coursing through her with that unstoppable tingly heat he awoke in her every time he held her close. Like they were the only thing left. The only thing that mattered.  

Like she wasn’t alone anymore.

And hey, if she ended up dead she ended up dead, but at least she wouldn’t die bored.

_ “Eveninnnnng Gotham!”  _ His voice boomed over the top of her head, she was the perfect height for it in heels, fitting snugly just under his chin. Like puzzle pieces. “Did ya miss me?”

This time she didn’t shy away, even as she kept her face carefully fixed in a mask of terror. Little Sally Scared in the flesh as she watched their reactions curiously,  _ hungrily,  _ cataloguing their fear and horror. The way they shied back like horses when they realised there was a killer in their midst.

It rippled through the crowd, a stone in a pond and he… he was at the centre of it all. 

And now she was too.

Her heart pounded, stuttering painfully as she met a familiar pair of eyes. Self doubt stabbed into her, a momentary blast of absolute self-disgust and raw horror as Bruce looked back at her, his kind black eyes squinted with such worry she felt sick.

What was she doing? What the-

Bruce turned on his heel, vanishing into the crowd before she could finish the thought. Sneaking out through a side door J’s goons hadn’t noticed yet.

_ Seriously? _

The doubt vanished, the hollow pit in her stomach filling up with exasperation. It was just such a  _ typical _ rich asshole thing to do, self preservation at its finest. Not trying to help, not stepping into the fray. Nope Brucie boy had just turned tail and saved his own skin!

She’d thought better of him. Another in a long line of things she was wrong about.

Well she knew better now! No more doubt, no more questioning, it was time to sit back and enjoy the ride. 

Even if it was just for a night.   
  


—-

 

Now this was what he was talking about!

The lights were shining, people were screaming, Harley girl was playing along like a puppet on a string. It was good to be working again.

Hell, it was good to be doing anything again!

“I hearrrrrd…” he dragged out the word, tilting his head at the horrified crowd in their finest as he basked in the moment, “there was a fundraiser for the Asylum? Yes? No? Yes?”

No response. Of course, not with these cowards. _Typical_ _. _

“Taking that as a yes, moving on… well, although my invitation was _late_ I knew that as Arkham's  _ premiere _ patient I had to stop by. Show you what you’re paying for! So... whaddya think?”

Keeping the knife to Harley girls throat for show with one hand he whipped out his gun with the other, gesturing widely to himself as the gang corralled the crowd. They’d coordinated their looks in scrubs and surgical masks, accessorizing with semi automatics and canvas sacks - the classy way.

Good looking kids.

“Please!” Someone moaned from the crowd, “please let us go-“

Ughhh unoriginal.

J ignored them. 

“I’ll try not to be offended by that,” he muttered dryly before his attention was bouncing away again, “now now of course it’s not just  _ me  _ your paying for! Your hard earned cash is also going to a whole buncha quacks like this particularly  _ lovely  _ lady,” he rewarded Harley with a taste of the spotlight, feeling her shiver against him as all eyes turned to her. “This is my Doctor, can ya believe it? I got lucky on that one huh I mean - ya seen most of ‘em? Yeesh, like one big ugly convention. Anywho, say ‘hi’ Harley.”

“Hi Harley,” she squeaked and he couldn’t help but snort, fingers clenching and relaxing as he held back his cackle. Even faking fear like a pro she still managed to be funny.

“She’s a riot,” he grinned fondly, “and she’s gonna help me with this next-“

“D-d-don’t move!”

And there was the idiot.

There always had to be  _ one  _ didn’t there. One asshole who just had to interrupt him just when he was getting to the good part. The  _ tasty  _ part. Separating the socialites from their sparklies by whatever means necessary, the hatchet was optional. Harley  _ wielding  _ the hatchet was preferable.

That’d be a sight for sore eyes alright, the thought made him down right frisky.

But first - the idiot!

J sighed, irritation ruffling over his nerves as he spun them round to face the speaker. Oh damn, was that  _ Dr Lyman?  _ It was! All greying hair, owl specs and ill fitting tux.

Who knew he had it in him?

“Really?” J tutted, eyes dropping to the weapon the good doc had decided to brandish at him.

A taser. 

A fucking  _ taser. _

Jeez _.  _

Talk about bringing a kazoo to a gunfight. 

He almost let him fire it, just for shits and giggles, but it wasn’t the right moment. Besides, he didn’t want to get all jerky with electricity and accidentally slash his date’s throat - that would be plain bad manners. Instead J slapped the weak little weapon out of the doc’s hand with the barrel of his gun before he aimed, squeezed and dropped ol’ Lyman like a sack of potatoes.

**Bang.**

Nothing to it.

“Anyone else?” He asked lazily as the people screamed and Harley tensed against him, still a little gun shy,  _ cute,  _ “anyone at all? Come on people, it’s now or never!” He waved the gun widely, eager to get back to the  _ fun  _ part, “Good-“

“Let her go, Joker.” 

Ugh. He’d been asking for that one really.

 

—-

 

The voice came from nowhere and everywhere, a deep gravel that skittered down her spine. She felt J freeze behind her, arms turning to steel as he turned them slowly so they could face the balcony doors.

A hulking figure stood against the threshold, all dressed in black and just as bizarre as the newspaper photos she’d seen. A study in shadows and surreality.

“Batsy!” J’s voice took on a fresh edge, the knife at her throat digging too hard. Blood beading along its edge as he clenched her close enough to hurt, “I didn’t see you on the invite list! You’re not uh-  _ crashing _ are you? I don’t wanna have to call security on ya now.”

“Let. Her. Go.”

“Hmm… nope!” she could hear the excitement in his voice, squirming against his hold as her ribs started to ache beneath his arm, as the blood dripped, “get your own hostage.”

A sharp jab of the blade froze her, his arm crushing her tighter still. She swallowed hard and stopped struggling, rewarded when he loosened his hold, the knife pulling away enough that she could breathe again.

Even if it felt impossible with  _ him  _ looking at her.

The Batman.

In the flesh.

She still couldn’t get over it, eyes like voids staring right through her as she was held between them. A rabbit caught between two semi trucks on a deserted highway.

He took a step forward, black cape swirling menacingly around his ankles as he entered the ballroom. Sucking all the air from it in a single stride.

He was here to save them,  _ her,  _ to take Mistah J back to Arkham where he could get help. So why did something in her recoil in disgust with each step closer he took?

Her stomach twisted as she looked at Gotham’s saviour,  _ really  _ looked at him, suddenly unable to see anything but the man who’d tried to kill J, who preached and preached about the sanctity of life and then pushed the man she… pushed  _ him _ into a deadly vat of chemicals.

He was worse than crazy.

He was a  _ hypocrite _ .

She felt herself shaking, J’s arms relaxing against her as he leant in close. The rough scratch of his breath against her ear centering her as she stared at the dark knight.

“Sorry about this Harls,” he murmured to her almost sweetly and then… then she was flying. Shoved hard across the room into the arms of a bunch of pale faced strangers.  

Her shoulders ached, ankle barking from the awkward fall as J discarded her completely. It was nothing compared to the painful twist in her chest though, ribs suddenly too tight around her insides as she looked across the ballroom. It shouldn’t hurt, not like this, but damn it she was beyond pretending now. No matter how fucked up it was she couldn’t help but feel  _ mortified _ to be relegated to the sidelines as Batman and the Joker went head to head, nothing more than an  _ extra  _ in her own life again.

She wanted to be important, to be in the thick of it, she wanted…  _ more. _

His laughter echoed around the room as someone scrambled to help her up, white noise voices filling her head as fists hit flesh. The gang converged on the centre of the room, bullets flying and fists thudding as the Batman took them all on at once. As he made short work of them.

Mistah J didn’t run. Didn’t back down. He stalked the edges of the fight, cheering them on before scattering them away with a wave of his hands when it was obvious they wouldn’t win.

“Alright lads,” he sighed, rolling up his sleeves theatrically, “you’ve had your fun, let daddy have a turn now.”

She shrugged the hands holding her up off, wrapping her arms tight around her waist instead as she turned to watch J step into the ring. As he took up the dance.

It was art.

God there was no other word for it.

Vicious, disgusting, terrifying  _ art.  _ J was in his element as he ducked and dodged and  _ taunted,  _ fists raised like an old timey boxer one moment, taking real swings the next.

Unpredictable as a rabid dog.

But Batman… Batman had the upper hand. Her stomach dropped, bile rising in her throat as he landed one blow after another.

“You’re going back to Arkham, Joker,” he growled through straight white teeth, fists striking over and over, “where you belong.”

J spat blood, “that makes at  _ least  _ two of us batsy old boy.”

Then he was looking at her.  _ Right _ at her. Catching her gaze from across the room and stopping her heart completely as he winked at her. 

He hadn’t forgotten her.

Her pulse restarted with a painful thump, drowning her in the sound as Batman struck again. Each rubberised thump smashing the grin further from J’s face and driving her closer and closer to the edge of something she couldn’t bear.

J was losing. 

He  _ couldn’t  _ lose.

Her gaze darted across the room for someone,  _ something  _ to save him with, swallowing hard as her eyes landed on a discarded black lump of plastic.

The taser.

_ You’ve really lost it now Harls,  _ she thought as she scrambled to grab it,  _ total whack a doodle. _

It didn’t matter. She was too far gone for that.

And J… J had fallen. Oh god he’d fallen and Batman was still hitting. He wouldn’t stop. Thump thump thump. Like before, like when he’d shoved him into that chemical vat.

He was  _ trying  _ to kill him.

**_TZZTZZZTZ!_ **

The world fell silent as the prongs stuck into black fabric, sparking blue white as Batman fell back. Her fingers were numb, the spent taser clattering to the ground as she stumbled towards them. Unable to stop her momentum now as J slumped to the ground wheezing.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she wish she’d snarled it but it was more of a squeak, a desperate broken whine as she stared up at him, ignorant to anything else around them, “you’re supposed to  _ help  _ people!”

Wasn’t he?

_ Wasn’t he? _

Heat burnt behind her eyes, inside her chest, a fireball waiting to explode as she ripped her gaze away. Unable to stand looking into those stunned, cold black eyes a moment longer as she fell to her knees beside J.

He was almost unrecognizable.

Tears tracked down her face, scalding her as she cradled his head in her lap with shaking hands, she hadn’t cried once in front of him when he’d taken her all those years ago, now she couldn’t seem to stop. Fury and fear blurring her vision, a swirl of white and green and  _ red.  _ So much red, she could feel it streaming over her hands, sticky hot and endless as she curled herself around J, trying to protect him from the next blow.

J coughed, a weak racking sound that rattled wet around his rib cage. She forgot Batman entirely, heart slicing with every beat as she tried to help him. To save him. Why couldn’t she remember her medical training? Why was she so  _ useless? _

He met her gaze, blue green eyes bloodshot and bruised but  _ alive  _ as they met hers, crinkling at the corners as his expression softened. 

As he smiled, just for her.

Her heart turned over, a harsh ache between her ribs as sirens sounded. Something broke inside of her, silent and irrevocable. Something she knew could never be fixed. Hands grabbed at her, pulling her away as the medics arrived.

She felt more helpless than she ever had before, watching from a million miles away as they dragged J away.

  
  



	13. Look What You Made Me Do.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was born like Venus from the waves.  
> Only with way more bloodshed and giggling...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoomp there it is! I'll save the note till the end this time cos I know what y'all are really here for ;-)  
> Now for tonight's entertainment...

 

Harley couldn’t sleep.

Her head ached with an endless loop of gunfire and laughter, a blood stained smile swimming behind her eyes every time she closed them. Just for her.

She’d hated him for so long, feared him… _wanted_ him. When had it everything gotten so mixed up? She couldn’t even begin to pinpoint it, the end of the record-book sized knot of feelings that had wrapped up her insides lost well and truly in the mess. Miles and miles of rage and worry and… and something _else_ all tangled up together.

Something so completely wrong she couldn’t bring herself to name it yet.

No matter how hard she pushed it down she couldn’t escape it, trapped on an endless carousel with her own cracked thoughts as she paced an apartment that had never been home. The stained walls closing in on her as the early morning sunlight began to creep across the window pane.

She needed to _talk_ to someone, someone who’d understand.

Only… only nobody could understand.

Nobody but _him_.

Well... it was Tuesday she supposed. They always had an appointment on Tuesdays. And surely three days was more than long enough for her to  _recover_ from the party? Hell, J had been out of the infirmary for two days already. She'd made sure to keep tabs on his progress even from home, they'd shoved him in lock down but even lock down patients got therapy sessions. Really, what did the board know? Why should she be forced out of work for a whole week? She hadn't been the one to get pummelled like a piece of meat by  Gotham’s _saviour_.

_Batman._

Hatred rose inside her, joining the ugly mess of feelings already scrambling her brain as she hurled her empty mug of coffee at the wall. Shuddering in satisfaction as it broke into a million pieces, sharp and jagged.

Like she was.

Like maybe she’d always been.

She had to speak to him.

 

 

“Harley,” Elizabeth Eddows was waiting in front of her office when she got to the Asylum, arms folded uncomfortably over her chest, “I thought you were going to take the week?”

“It seemed a bit unnecessary Elizabeth,” she smiled brightly, almost _cheerful_ now she was finally here. Calmer knowing _he_ was only a few corridors and a half hour away, “I thought it best to get back on the horse, besides I have an appointment with Mis- with patient 4479 today and I didn’t want to miss it.”

“About that,” the older woman’s gaze flickered back and forth, weakness flashing in her dark eyes as they didn’t quite meet Harley’s own, “I’ve spoken to the directors and we all agree that perhaps it’s best for you to take a break from this case for a while. We’re going to reassign you to-“

“ _Why_?” There was no pretence of politeness now. Only cold hard dread in the pit of her stomach as she recoiled from the words.

“Well,” Elizabeth cleared her throat stiffly, “to be honest Harley we think perhaps you’ve gotten a little too… _close_ to the situation.”

She may as well have slapped her.

How dare they.

 _How_ _dare they._

Elizabeth was still talking, still making excuses and halfhearted attempts at consolation. They were looking to fast track her original plans to transfer, they would give her more _suitable_ patients in the meantime, how Elizabeth had always known she was too young for this particular case. A thousand thousand excuses that went through her like needles.

“Thank you Doctor Eddows,” Harley cut her off mid sentence, bristling as she stepped around her to open her office door, “if you’ll excuse me I have some paperwork I need to catch up on.”

“Oh… of course,” Eddows nodded, looking more than a little relieved to have been spared the rest of the conversation, “I’ll leave you to it, Doctor Quinzel.”

_Coward._

Harley shut the door firmly behind her, the gunshot click of the lock slicing through her. Absolutely final. She took one shaky step towards her desk then another, sinking to her knees before she could take the third.

They were taking him away from her.

The one lonely bright spot in her entire life blinking out in front of her eyes and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing she could do to keep from falling apart as her spine bowed beneath the weight of it.

The _emptiness._

Because that’s what life would be without him. No matter how much she had hated him, feared him, without him it had _always_ been empty. A bad photocopy of what it could be, smudged and grey and not nearly enough.

She’d told herself it was what she wanted once, taught herself to survive it, but now…

Now the thought of spending the rest of her life without him? It was too much. She couldn’t be powerless again.

J was right.

It hit her hard enough she gasped, clutching her chest as the thought went through her like a fist.

_J was right._

About _everything._ The world, the Asylum, _chaos_ , her, them...

And she had to do something about it.

There could be no more waiting, no more letting other people dictate her life to her, telling her what she should and shouldn’t want. Who she should or shouldn’t be.

If she wanted more she’d have to take it, she’d have to make the decision for herself.

So she did.

Climbing to her feet she dragged herself over to her desk, hands shaking as she opened her bag. Anxious energy wringing her insides like a juicer as she dumped the contents, searching through the debris of her life for a scrap of paper she’d shoved in there a lifetime ago.

She was terrified. No two ways about it. But it felt _good._ Exhilarating to know she was taking things into her own hands at last, a manic energy that kept her from wilting as she picked up her phone. Punching the number in and waiting, exhaling hard as a familiar voice crackled down the line.

“Yeah, who is it?”

“Laney? It’s Harley,” she met her gaze in the reflection of one of the certificates she’d wasted so much of her life chasing, knocking the frame off centre with a smile,  “I need a handgun, as soon as possible, and some back up outside the Asylum later today.”

The henchwoman didn’t balk, didn’t question her. Absolute determination in her voice as she replied, “whatever you need, it’s yours.”

What she needed was a miracle.

Or failing that, a helluva lot of fire power.

 

—-

 

“ _Hey!_ ”  J hammered on the door, upgraded from isolation to full on lock down since his last escape. It was irritating but not impossible to deal with.

But the great escape could wait, it was appointment time and he was dying to see how his Harley Girl was holding up after the party.

Jeez, that Batsy was _such_ a cockblock.

He rubbed at his bruised jaw, working the tension out of it with an annoyed wince as he ran through the events of the night before in his mind. What a shitweasel, trying to make him look bad in front of his date. Getting in the way of his plans before they’d even started!

But heh, the joke was firmly on the rubber rube.

It always was.

Sure, it wasn’t _exactly_ how he wanted their third date to end, that was true, but he wasn’t one to overlook an opportunity. Every unnecessary bruise paying for itself three times over once he’d seen the look on her face as she tazed the big man. That was a memory to keep a guy warm on a cold night, little Harley with her stupid plastic shock gun shooting at Gotham’s Favorite.

Imagine what she could do with some _real_ firepower. That was something he’d like to see.

If they ever opened the _goddamn door!_

“Come on! What’s the big idea!” He pounded harder at the metal as the minutes dragged past, bruised knuckles complaining with every strike.

The intercom crackled, the speakers they’d rigged high above the door blasting feedback as a bored voice came over the line, “Pipe down inmate.”

He turned his attention to the speakers, forehead creased hard enough to leave marks, “I got an appointment! Hop to it!”

There was a sigh, the sound of papers ruffling and… “Not today you don’t, tomorrow neither. You’re in there ‘til they find you a new shrink, _if_ they find one.” The guard added in an undertone before yelling, “Now shut the hell up!”

_What?!_

Rage crystallised within him, cold and sharp and all encompassing, the icy sort of stillness that only came before absolute carnage.

This could only mean one of two very important things.

Either they’d taken Harley off his case, in which case they’d all die for it.

Or…

Or she’d run away.

No, no she wouldn’t would she?

Not _again._

Damn, he’d been fooled before. _By her_. When she’d batted her fucking blue eyes and smiled her red smile and vanished into the night as soon as his back was turned. His blood began to boil, anger unlike any he’d known before coursing through him like the fucking  _sun,_  setting his hands shaking _._

If she had, if she’d even _thought_ about it… he struck out at the door, reopening a dozen half-healed wounds. Oh he would do more than kill her. He’d rip her mind apart piece by piece and feed her to the goddamn dogs, he’d drive her so far off the deep end she’d drown on her own goddamn melted brains.

She was _his_ damnit and she didn’t just get to walk away from him.

Not now. Not _ever._

 

—-

 

Walking away was easy.

Insanely easy it turned out, she turned her back on everything she once thought she wanted without a backwards glance. Steps lighter than she could remember as she wondered what the hell had taken her so long.

Why _had_ she put up with it?

The never ending dullness, the pain of scraping by in a world that constantly undervalued her. Yeesh, the fact she’d stuck with it for eight fucking years… now _that_ was madness.

Flipping open her compact she took a steadying breath, hands still shaking ever so slightly as she adjusted her hair in the mirror. Making sure that she still at least _looked_ like the plastic professional they were expecting to see. Lipstick on, glasses straight, expression bland.

Calm.

Like she didn’t have a Glock weighing heavily in her pocket, like she was just pleased to see them.

Smiling to herself she clicked the compact shut, it had been good to see Laney again. Her new-old friend handing over the gun in the parking lot with a look of such absolute confidence that Harley couldn’t help but breathe a little easier. Laney had been certain that Harley was doing the right thing, and that the remnants of J’s gang would back her up no questions asked.

How long had it been since she had people she knew she could fall back on?

People who supported her no matter what?

Sure, she didn’t think those people would be card carrying nuts who henched for her homicidal crush, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Besides, she was hardly winning any awards for sanity any more.

A clock chimed somewhere in the distance, signalling the late afternoon shift change.

It was time.

Hauling in a deep breath she made her peace with whatever God would still have her and set off at a determined clip for the high security wing. Hopefully Arkham bureaucracy was running as slowly as it usually did, with any luck no one would realise she didn’t have clearance to visit her usual patient until long after they were gone.

Luck stayed with her right up until she hit the lock down floor.

And walked straight into Elizabeth Eddows.

_Balls._

“Doctor Quinzel,” Elizabeth’s gaze went straight from surprised to suspicious, travelling over her lightening fast like she could _see_ the change in her, “What’re you doing down here?”

“Looking for you actually,” Harley lied brightly, trying to think on her feet even as her hand itched against the gun in her pocket, “you weren’t in your office, do you have a minute?”

“ _Harley,”_  Elizabeth’s face took on that pinched expression she hated so much, the strained know-it-all look that said ‘ _I’ve been doing this longer so I know better,’_ bullshit. “You really shouldn’t be here, I think it’s best if you return to the unrestricted section.”

Welp. Looked like good old Doctor Elizabeth Eddows wasn’t going to do this the easy way then.

Harley couldn’t help it, a smile twitching at her mouth as she pulled her gun _,_ pleased she'd kept up her trips to the range long after she left Gotham for the first time.

“Move or be moved, Liz.” She chirped, a familiar power licking up her arm at the feeling of cold metal in her hand. It was electric, sparking over her nerves as she narrowed her eyes, “I’m late for my appointment.”

“H-Harley-“ Elizabeth went pale, cross-eyed as she tried to keep the barrel of the gun in view as Harley waved it at her, “what are you doing?”

“Getting _too close_ to the situation,” she shot back, the smirk becoming a harsh grin at the poetic irony of it all.

“He’s done this to you,” Elizabeth murmured, face going so grey it almost blended into her hair, “the Joker, he’s brainwashed you somehow… you need help.”

Oh _yawn._

“That’s what ya never understood Liz,” Harley clicked the safety off, a sweetly satisfying noise in the echoing hallway as she drew it level, “this was never about J. It was about _me_.”

“Harl-“

THUMP.

The silencer took the brunt of the noise off, Elizabeth Eddows falling to the floor mid-sentence with a perfect red dime in the middle of her forehead.

It really was like riding a bicycle.

Harley had worried that maybe the impact of what she’d done might knock her off course, that she’d wake up suddenly and start screaming. But she didn’t. She knew now there was nothing to wake up from, not any more. It had taken years but she was finally here, breaking the surface of the bottomless black lake she’d been drowning in and _breathing_.

She wasn't going to waste a single breath.

“You’re really not half as smart as you think you are, you know that Liz?” she told the corpse, stepping over it daintily and retrieving her superior’s security passes. “Y'know how I know? Cos you’re dead and I’m _not_.”

Snorting to herself she spun the plastic passes around her finger, leaving the body where it had fallen.

She had bigger fish to fry.

 

—-

 

The light next to the door flashed red twice.

_Medicine time._

Good. He was feeling violent and they couldn’t exactly stick him any further underground even if he attacked the guards. Nope, whoever was coming through those doors was getting the sharp end of his anger.

Right through the _eye socket._

The doors creaked open, two big brutes filling up the space between, shock sticks and syringes at the ready. Overkill really, well it was _about_ to be anyway if he had anything to do with it.

He tensed, whole body ready to strike, lurching forward only-

Only they were already bleeding.

_What the fuck?_

Blood blossomed against their uniforms, mouths gaping in shock as they tipped forward like felled trees. There was a figure behind them, gun in hand and the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen on her face.

“Miss me, Mistah J?”

Well blow him down with a feather!

“Har- _leeeey,”_ he blinked, absolutely shocked as he took her in.  There was blood on her perfect white coat, glasses off-centre as she grinned at him.

She looked _deranged._

And he had never been happier to be wrong in his entire life, the rage bursting like a soap bubble as he started laughing and found he couldn't stop. Oh she was a sight alright. Still cackling he kicked the corpses out of the way to get a real good look at her.

“And here I was told I wouldn’t be seeing you anymore.”

“Yeah well,” she shrugged, taking a delicate step left for each he took right until they were slowly circling each other in the spreading pool of red, “I’m thinking about a change in career.”

“Really?” He raised his eyebrows, the picture of nonchalance even as he eyed her up hungrily, all that violent energy inside him turning into something else. Something just as uncompromising, just as vicious, but with far more... _possibilities._ Something... _zesty._ “What you thinking about doing now then? Write a book? Go on stage?”

“Hmm, no,” her smile was sharp edged, beautiful as broken glass as she kept herself _just_ out of his reach, tension jumping beneath his skin like a frog on a firecracker as they danced, “I was thinking a little murder, a little mayhem…”

“A little… chaos?” He offered lightning fast.

“A _lot_ of chaos.”

That was his girl.

One step and she was right in front of him, blue eyes flashing in the dim light as she looked up at him from under her lashes. Anticipation surged through him, hands twitching with it as she fell into his orbit. This would be-

_Smack._

He reeled, rolling back on his heels as her palm made contact with his cheek. A hard slap that sent his ears ringing.

“Damn Harls,” he was too shocked to be angry, hand pressed against his stinging cheek, “what was that for?”

“For everything you’ve done to me over the years Mistah J, everything you made me do, made me _feel_ .” The flashing in her eyes had become a flare, bright as a forest fire as it burnt her up from the inside. Mad mad _mad_. “This is too-”

Then she was stretching right up on her tippy toes and kissing him square on the smacker with everything she had.

It was a first, he thought dimly, he wasn’t much one for being kissed by people, it wasn’t really his gig persay. His demeanour built more for fear than affection. He’d kissed her sure but this, this seemed like a whole other kettle of fish somehow. But heck - it didn’t seem to be stopping her, warm and willing as she pressed up against him. A whip crack of desire fractured through him as she _wiggled._

Welp. No point being _rude_ about it.

He swept his arms around her, eliciting a startled little squeak as he spun her around, her fire catching in him, charring his bones as he laughed against her mouth. Her giggles mixing with kisses as she nipped at his scars.

His masterpiece in motion.

“Women,” he muttered, shaking his head as he dropped her to her feet at last, “can’t live with ‘em, can’t bury them under the patio and say they’ve moved outta state.”

“You’ll get used to it Mistah J,” she giggled, feather light as she laced her fingers through his.

“Oh will I now?”

She suddenly looked shy, bashful even as she averted her eyes. Cheeks colouring prettily beneath the blood splatter. “If… if you want too…”

“Hmm,” he considered her intently, snatching up her chin so he could watch the worry play out in her eyes for a long moment. Face as close to serious as he could make it before he released her hand, seeing the disappointment in her eyes before he reached up to pull her glasses off instead. Crushing them under foot, “I think this could be start of a beautiful relationship.”

She _grinned,_ a high beam headlight on a dirt road at night. Blinding and wonderfully dangerous.

“That _is,”_ he added with a hefty sigh, cocking his head as he looked at the felled guards, “if you have a plan to get us outta here doll? Pretty sure this cell isn’t built for two.”

“Oh right!” Her eyes widened, looking around as if she’d only just remembered where they were, “Escaping! On it!”

He grinned, content to follow her lead.

For now at least.

 

—-

 

The corridors of Arkham stretched around her, suddenly so much longer than they usually were. Endless stone tunnels as she navigated them around check points and through little-used staff shortcuts.

Still, even now, with a crazy mix of terror and excitement in her veins she felt better than she had in… well _ever._ Like she could fly if he asked.

_He wanted her._

He wanted her. He wanted her. He wanted her.

They wanted  _each other._

She could _scream,_ heart tripping two miles a minute at the casual warmth of his hand in hers as they ducked and darted through the echoing halls. They were close now, so close, the whole wide world waiting for them just outside. She’d rigged a side door to get out of without triggering the alarms so they wouldn’t have to use the main entrance, it was right by the security station but so long as nobody came out unexpectedly it shouldn’t be a problem.

Just dash past, out the door, into the waiting van and boom. They were home safe.

Her life could _begin._

**_AWOOOOAHHHHH!_ **

Fuck a duck.

Harley winced, shoulders tensing as the alarms started screaming over head. A symphony of blaring noises and flashy red lights piercing through her as she tried to pull J that final few yards to the door. Fate had other ideas. Security guards streamed out of the break room, right between them and freedom.

Fuck two ducks.

They drew up short at the sight of them, wobbling for just a moment before they reached for their weapons. J’s hand was still in hers, dragging her into his side automatically as they appeared. _Protectively._

Her heart fluttered.

“Doctor Quinzel what’s going on?”

Oh shit, right reality, “I- uh-“

“Uh Harls,” J murmured under his breath, cutting her stuttering off, “I thought you said no one was due to check in on the super max ward for another two hours?”

“They’re not,” she squeaked back as quietly as she could, “but I think they might have found Doctor Eddows body.”

“You killed Eddows?” He blinked at her, “to be honest I’m too impressed to be mad right now.”

“Thanks puddin’”

“Now about these guys?”

“Doctor Quinzel!” The guns were out, pointed straight at J as they gaped at them.

Harley saw red, having to physically shake herself to get her head on straight. To stop herself from just pulling her gun and emptying the clip into them in a hail of fury and most likely bloody death for all involved.

No no no, time for some common sense.

Time to take care of _business._

“I’m being held hostage,” she cried, wrenching herself free from J’s grasp and stumbling towards them, “p-please help me- he… he’s a _monster_!“

She added a handful of strangled sobs, a bit much perhaps but it worked. The guards closed around her, a protective wall with their backs to her as their attention focused firmly on J again.

“Really?” he shouted over their heads, eyebrow flicking up in annoyance.

She pulled a face at him, waving her gun behind the guards backs. J’s eyes widened, mouth parting in a silent ‘oh’ as he nodded. Vindicated Harley lined up her shot, five men, five bullets.

She better not miss.

_Thump thump thump thump… thump._

They didn’t have time to think, to realise the real threat had been behind them the whole time.

 _Idiots_.

“' _Monster,'_ Harls?” J grinned, stepping over the prone bodies like they weren’t even there, “want some eggs with that _ham_?”

She stuck her tongue out at him, “It worked didn’t it? Come on - the gangs waiting and I told Laney to get grenade-y if there were any problems.”

J grinned, that bright beautiful smile that went straight to her head and left her dizzy as he pinched her cheek, “That’s my Harley Girl,”

“Nope,” she felt her own grin spreading, lighting her up from within as she lost herself in his eyes. She wasn’t a girl, not anymore, she was a grown ass woman and she’d made her own decision this time. She was his clown. His… “ _Harlequin._ ”

“Harley Quinn, huh?” he said, mispronouncing it in a way she loved. In a way that felt right, “I love it!”

And she loved him.

For better or worse, no matter the consequences.

“Come on then, _Harley Quinn,”_ he grabbed her hand again, tugging her towards the open door and the rest of their lives, “let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

An explosion sounded in the distance, fresh air whipping her face as a van pulled up in front of their exit. Her heart growing wings inside her chest as he pulled her from the asylum and into the back of it.

She didn’t know what would happen next. Life, death, murder, mayhem, chaos.

She just knew that whatever it was she wouldn’t have to face it alone anymore.

Whatever it was… it would be _fun._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it's over! I can't believe we did it! And I seriously cannot thank everyone who has read and commented on this fic enough, and those of you who maybe are reading this in the future - I really do hope you take the time to leave a comment, they mean the world to me!  
> Y'all have honestly kept me inspired and there is no way in hell I could have finished this beast without you so from the bottom of my mad loving heart - thank yoooou!
> 
> NOW WITH YET ANOTHER SEQUEL! Check out part three ‘Holiday Crazies’ on my profile now! I hope you enjoy it if you do!))


End file.
